THE  UNITED  STATES 
AND  CANADA 

A  POLITICAL  STUDY 


By 

GEORGE  M.   WRONG 

Professor  of  History  in  the  Unirersity  of  Toronto 


THE    ABINGDON    PRESS 
NEW  YORK        CINCINNATI 


U     w     w      C    t> 


Copyright,  1921,  by 
GEORGE  M.  WRONG 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY 


V   GEORGE  SLOCUM  BENNETT  FOUNDATION 


LECTURES 


For  the  Promotion  of  a  Better  Under- 
standing of  National  Problems  and 
of  a  More  Perfect  Realization  of 
the    Responsibilities    of    Citizenship 


SECOND  SERIES— 1919-1920 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction 7 

Preface 11 

Lecture  I 
The  Dominance  of  the   English-speaking 
Peoples  in  America 13 

Lectutie  II 
The    Creation   of    Two    English-speaking 
States  in  America 39 

Lectu]?e  III 
The    Growth    of    Federalism    in    North 
America  65 

Lecture  IV 
Likenesses  and  Contrasts  in  the  Federal 
Systems  of  the  United  States  and  Canada    85 

Lecture  V 
The  Place  of  Canada  in  the  British  Com- 
monwealth     124 

Lecture  VI 
The  Future 154 


INTRODUCTION 

George  Slocum  Bennett,  a  graduate  of 
Wesley  an  University  in  the  class  of  1864, 
showed  his  lifelong  interest  in  the  training  of 
youth  for  the  privileges  and  duties  of  citi- 
zenship by  long  periods  of  service  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  board  of  education  of  his  home 
city,  and  as  member  of  the  boards  of  trustees 
of  Wj^oming  Seminary  and  Wesley  an  Uni- 
versitj\ 

It  was  fitting,  therefore,  that,  when  the 
gifts  made  by  himself  and  family  to  Wes- 
leyan  University  were  combined  to  form  a 
fund  whose  income  should  be  used  "in  de- 
fraying the  expenses  of  providing  for  visit- 
ing lecturers,  preachers,  and  other  speakers 
supplemental  to  the  college  faculty,'*  it 
should  have  been  decided  that  the  primary 
purpose  should  be  to  provide  each  year  a 

7 


8  INTRODUCTION 

course  of  lectures,  by  a  distinguished 
speaker,  "for  the  promotion  of  a  better  un- 
derstanding of  national  problems  and  of  a 
more  perfect  realization  of  the  responsibili- 
ties of  citizenship,"  and  to  provide  for  the 
publication  of  such  lectures  so  that  they 
might  reach  a  larger  public  than  the  audi- 
ence to  which  they  should,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, be  addressed. 

To  give  the  second  course  of  lectures  on 
this  foundation,  the  joint  committee  for  its 
administration,  appointed  by  the  board  of 
trustees  and  by  the  faculty,  selected  George 
Mackinnon  Wrong,  professor  of  history  in 
the  University  of  Toronto.  This  choice  was 
made  in  hearty  recognition  of  the  closer  sym- 
pathy which  had  drawn  the  two  sister  nations 
of  EngHsh  speech  on  this  continent  to  one 
another  in  the  comradeship  of  arms,  of  ideals, 
and  of  losses  in  the  World  War.  It  was  also 
made  in  appreciation  not  merely  of  Profes- 
sor Wrong's  high  scholarship  as  an  historian, 
but  also  of  the  fine  spirit  in  which  he  has 


INTRODUCTION  9 

ever  exemplified  his  conviction  that  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples,  especially  on  this  con- 
tinent, should  live  together  in  friendship  and 
work  together  for  the  advancement  in  the 
world  of  liberty,  self-government,  and  peace. 
William  Arnold  Shanklin, 
Reuben  Nelson  Bennett, 
Albert  Wheeler  Johnston, 
Frank  Edgar  Farley, 
George  Matthew  Dutcher, 

Committee. 


PREFACE 

Lectures  to  a  university  audience  should, 
of  course,  express  the  detached  mind  of  a 
searcher  after  truth,  and  I  have  tried  to 
maintain  this  attitude  and  to  refrain  from 
either  praise  or  blame  in  discussing  both  the 
present  and  the  past.  My  aim  has  been  to 
explain,  in  no  recondite  or  learned  way, 
some  of  the  things  in  which  the  United  States 
and  Canada  are  alike  and  also  different. 

Canada  reads  much  more  about  the  United 
States  than  the  United  States  reads  about 
Canada,  just  as  Scotland  reads  more  about 
England  than  England  reads  about  Scot- 
land. This  condition  is  inevitable  when  a 
nation  with  a  small  population  lies  side  by 
side  with  a  greater  neighbor  speaking  the 
same  language.  To  the  thought  of  the  peo- 
ple of  the  United  States,  numbering  a  hun- 
dred milHons,  Canada,  with  its  eight  mil- 
lions, does  not  loom  large ;  while  the  opposite 
condition  is  found  in  Canada.  Many  of  the 
books  and  the  newspapers  which  Canadians 

11 


12  PREFACE 

read  are  impregnated  with  American 
thought,  while  Canada  exercises  practically 
no  influence  upon  her  neighbor. 

It  is  chiefly  due  to  this  lack  of  reciprocity 
in  thought  that  occasionally,  in  quarters  gen- 
erally well  informed,  discussions  arise  as  to 
whether,  to  cancel  her  debt.  Great  Britain 
might  not  sell  Canada  to  the  United  States. 
Such  a  proposal  causes  a  pained  smile  on  the 
faces  of  people  on  both  sides  of  the  frontier 
who  really  understand.  England  might  as 
well  propose  to  sell  Scotland  to  France  or 
Germany.  Sometimes  too  a  desire  is  ex- 
pressed to  help  to  liberate  Canada.  The  only 
answer  to  such  suggestions  is  to  try  to  reach 
a  better  understanding  of  the  relations  of 
the  two  peoples  and  it  was  to  aid,  however 
shghtly,  in  effecting  this  that  these  lectures 
were  given. 

I  am  greatly  indebted  to  Professor  George 
M.  Dutcher,  vice-president  of  Wesley  an 
University,  for  many  personal  kindnesses 
and  to  my  friend  Professor  W.  Bennett 
Munro,  of  Harvard  University,  for  helpful 
criticism. 

UNI^^IiSITY  OF  Toronto.  G.  M.  W. 


LECTURE  I 

THE  DOMINANCE  OF  THE  ENG- 
LISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 
IN  AMERICA 

Eras  of  excitement  and  passion  are  invari- 
ably followed  by  disillusion  and  reaction,  and 
the  days  after  the  Great  War  have  seen  this 
inevitable  result.  Over  the  beautiful  portal 
of  a  churchyard  in  England  were  written  the 
words,  "This  is  none  other  than  the  Gate  of 
Heaven."  In  a  stormy  season  the  custodian 
put  on  the  gatepost  the  notice  that  "owing 
to  the  inclemency  of  the  weather  this  gate  is 
closed  until  further  notice."  This  is  our  state 
of  mind  at  the  present  time.  During  the 
days  of  peace  the  poKtical  weather  has 
proved  inclement  and  a  good  many  people 
are  wondering  whether  the  sun  will  ever 
shine  again.  The  joy  of  battle  is  exhilarat- 
ing, even  if  the  fight  is  exhausting.  When 
peace  with  victory  was  still  beyond  reach  we 
desired  it  with  a  great  longing.  Now  it  has 
come.    The  old  stimulus  is  gone  and  not  yet 

13 


14         THE  UNITED  STATES 

have  we  been  able  to  concentrate  our 
thoughts  upon  that  goal  in  the  futui-e  which 
will  inspire  us  to  combined  effort.  Faintheart 
is  tempted  to  be  weary  and  depressed. 

It  is  probably  true  that  the  war  would  not 
have  taken  place  if  during  the  last  ten  years 
the  English-speaking  peoples  had  shown  that 
they  were  united.  Wisdom  after  the  event 
is  not  of  a  very  exacting  or  penetrating  kind, 
and  we  need  not  lay  too  much  emphasis  upon 
what  might  have  been.  Clearly,  however,  if 
the  vast  array  of  power  which  is  represented 
by  the  United  States  and  the  British  Com- 
monwealth had  been  used  during  the  last  ten 
years  to  say  that  there  should  be  no  war,  its 
word  might  well  have  proved  effective  even 
to  restrain  Germany's  lust  for  world  power. 
In  fact,  as  we  know,  Germany  did  not  be- 
lieve that  the  nations  within  the  British  Com- 
monwealth would  unite  to  check  her;  and  it 
would  have  required  something  very  definite 
and  precise  to  make  her  beheve  that  the 
United  States  could  be  counted  upon  to  act 
with  them.  It  remains  true,  however,  that 
voices  speaking  in  English  might  have  pre- 
served the  world  which  existed  before  1914. 


AND  CANADA  15 

It  may,  indeed,  be  well  that  that  world, 
sick  as  now  we  see  it  to  have  been,  should  go. 
Not  always  is  it  true  that  in  the  sunlight  we 
see  the  truth  most  clearly.  It  is  in  the  dark- 
ness of  the  night  that  the  stars  glow  and  the 
moon  shines  with  a  beauty  which  may  not  be 
seen  at  midday.  In  the  darkness  of  sorrow 
and  sacrifice  men  learn  to  know  the  mysteries 
of  their  own  hearts.  This  appears  to  be  an 
ultimate  law  of  life,  and  it  is  vain  to  question 
the  constitution  of  a  world  in  which  we  our- 
selves play  so  feeble  a  part.  The  long  dark- 
ness of  more  than  four  years  of  war  revealed 
to  us  things  which  we  did  not  see  in  the  sun- 
shine. Both  evil  and  good  have  been  made 
manifest — good  perhaps  more  than  evil,  for 
the  war  brought  out  a  heroism  and  a  readi- 
ness for  sacrifice  in  the  heart  of  the  common 
man  which  we  had  either  never  known  or  had 
forgotten. 

Whatever  might  have  been  done  before 
th/?  war,  now  at  least  we  confront  a  reahzed 
situation  unprecedented  in  character.  As  a 
result  of  the  war  the  strongest  nations  left 
in  the  western  world  are  the  English-speak- 
ing nations.    Possibly  more  even  than  Ger- 


16         THE  UNITED  STATES 

many  is  France  exhausted,  with  a  grim  strip 
of  ruin  three  hundred  and  fifty  miles  long 
forming  her  northeastern  frontier.  Desola- 
tion reigns  where  once  were  fertile  fields, 
prosperous  villages,  and  ancient  and  beauti- 
ful towns  and  cities.  Lille  is  maimed;  Arras, 
Cambrai,  and  a  dozen  other  cities  are  heaps 
of  ruins;  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  the 
best  manhood  of  France  lie  under  the  white 
crosses  that  mark  the  resting  places  of  her 
multitudinous  dead.  Italy  is  impoverished; 
Austria  and  Hungary  are  prostrate ;  and  of 
all  the  states  of  continental  Europe  it  is  per- 
haps true  that  defeated  Germany  can  look 
forward  to  the  future  with  the  greatest  as- 
surance. Were  it  not  for  the  vigor  and 
resources  of  the  English-speaking  world,  we 
might  see  again  what  has  happened  before, 
that  the  vanquished,  in  the  moment  of  his 
defeat,  is  the  real  conqueror.  Long  ago  the 
energy  of  the  English  mastered  the  conquer- 
ing Norman  who  ruled  in  England,  just  as 
Rome  in  her  defeat  became  the  schoolmaster 
of  her  barbarian  masters  and  turned  them 
into  her  servants. 

The  United  States  has  now  one  hundred 


AND  CANADA  17 

and  five  million  people.  As  yet  of  some  of 
the  new-comers  English  is  not  the  language 
of  daily  life,  but  it  will  certainly  be  the  lan- 
guage of  their  children  and  of  their  children's 
children.  Within  the  British  Commonwealth 
there  are  some  sixty-five  million  people  who 
speak  English.  It  is  thus  the  tongue  of  one 
hundred  and  seventy  million  people,  nearly 
two-thirds  of  them  in  the  single  contiguous 
area  of  the  United  States.  Never  before 
has  the  world  seen  such  a  condition — nearly 
two  hundred  million  people  who  speak  and 
write  and  think  in  English,  who  can  exchange 
without  misunderstanding  the  niceties  of 
thought  in  a  language  simple  in  structure, 
with  a  great  range  in  its  vocabulary,  and  a 
literature  in  extent  and  variety  surpassing 
any  other  in  existence.  The  war  has  brought 
the  unlooked-for  result  that  two  great  con- 
quering peoples  with  this  wonderful  speech 
are,  if  they  choose  so  to  be,  the  masters  of  the 
destinies  of  the  world. 

Goethe  was  wont  to  say  that,  had  his  native 
tongue  been  English,  he  would  hardly  have 
ventured  to  write  poetry,  since  the  long  line 
of  English  poets  had  expressed  already  what 


18         THE  UNITED  STATES 

would  have  come  to  his  mind.  A  people  with 
a  noble  Hterature  at  their  command  have  a 
great  advantage  among  the  nations.  A  gen- 
eration without  a  literature  from  the  past 
and  limited  by  its  own  thought  is  indeed 
poor.  Society  is  too  complex  for  us  to  esti- 
mate the  effect  upon  the  life  of  to-day  of  the 
background  of  thought  from  a  nation's  past, 
but  it  is  undoubtedly  very  great.  It  is  true, 
of  course,  that  only  a  few  read  any  books  but 
those  of  the  present ;  but  it  is  also  true  that 
in  these  very  books  is  summed  up  the  influ- 
ence on  the  mind  of  the  writers  of  all  the 
past.  Shakespeare  and  Milton  speak 
through  even  the  mediocre  author  of  to-day. 
By  schoolbook  and  newspaper,  by  quotation 
and  proverb,  the  minds  of  great  writers  have 
helped  to  form  present-day  thought.  A  na- 
tion is  what  it  reads  more  truly,  perhaps,  than 
it  is  what  it  eats. 

When  two  peoples  speak  in  the  same  lan- 
guage, this  common  influence  must  tend  to 
make  them  alike.  What  is  said  in  New  York 
on  one  day  may  be  circulated  in  the  same 
form  in  London  on  the  day  following,  and 
will  carry  with  it  whatever  strength  its  in- 


AND  CANADA  19 

herent  truth  commands.  It  falls  upon  soil 
already  prepared  by  a  long  succession  of  sim- 
ilar happenings  in  the  past.  To  every  point 
where  the  English  tongue  is  spoken  the 
thought  may  be  carried.  Be  it  radical  or 
conservative,  it  conveys  its  message,  and  the 
men  who  read  it  tend  to  grow  together  in 
mental  outlook.  Counteracting  influences 
there  are,  of  course;  contrasts  of  tradition 
and  environment  which  involve  differing  em- 
phasis upon  the  same  thoughts ;  but  the  com- 
mon language  is  a  mighty  power  for  similar- 
ity of  outlook.  The  people  who  read  both 
Emerson  and  Mill,  by  so  much  tend  to  come 
together;  and  when  the  people  are  those  of 
the  far-flung  states  of  the  British  Common- 
wealth and  the  American  Union  the  influ- 
ence soon  becomes  world-wide. 

In  some  such  way  we  may  believe  was 
Greek  thought  carried  from  one  Greek- 
speaking  community  to  another.  The  chief 
endowment  which  the  Greeks  took  from  the 
home  land  was  that  of  its  language  and  its 
hterature.  The  insight  and  the  vivacity  of 
the  Greek  mind  working  in  the  scene  of  the 
coasts  and  islands  of  the  eastern  Mediter- 


20         THE  UNITED  STATES 

ranean  were  suited  to  the  creation  of  small 
states,  with  no  political  tie  other  than  the 
Greek  spirit.  Greece  produced  Plato  and 
Aristotle,  men  who  pondered  deeply,  in  an 
environment  compact  enough  to  be  under- 
stood, the  problems  of  human  life  and  espe- 
cially those  of  the  organization  of  man  in 
society.  The  Republic  of  Plato  and  the 
Politics  of  Aristotle  are  treatises  on  man  liv- 
ing under  the  influence  of  political  ties  with 
his  fellows.  Expressed  in  the  vigorous  and 
lucid  language  of  Greece,  they  were  carried 
far.  They  survived  the  ruin  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  they  were  debated  with  awe  and  rev- 
erence by  the  later  philosophy  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  they  play  still  their  vital  part  in 
the  discussions  of  our  own  day.  Such  was 
the  triumph  of  a  literature  in  a  language 
fitted  for  the  expression  of  rich  thought. 

We  can  hardly  doubt  that  English  is  the 
successor  of  Greek  as  the  chief  tongue  of 
political  theory.  The  most  vital  thought  in 
modern  political  society  comes  from  sources 
in  the  Enghsh  tongue.  The  eternal  glory 
of  England  in  the  world  of  politics  is  that 
the  island  state,  secure  in  its  frontiers,  was 


AND  CANADA  21 

able,  first  of  European  nations,  to  shake  off 
the  sway  of  the  despot  and  to  secure  for  its 
people  real  political  power.  It  was  England 
who  gave  to  the  world  representative  institu- 
tions, that  type  of  political  society  in  which 
authority  is  yielded  to  persons  chosen  by  the 
people  ruled,  to  control  ..nd  in  time  to  admin- 
ister their  government.  It  was  England's 
daughter  who  added  to  this  the  principle 
which  has  borne  the  test  of  experience,  that 
free  states,  while  retaining  their  local  hber- 
ties,  might  unite  for  common  purposes  and 
carry  representative  institutions  into  a  union 
of  states  in  a  wider  nation.  Successful  fed- 
eralism is  the  achievement  of  America.  The 
principle  made  only  dim  gropings  in  politi- 
cal society  until  the  thirteen  colonies  brought 
it  into  the  full  hght  of  the  world. 

Language  is  the  expression  of  the  spirit 
of  a  people  and  in  a  subtle  way  carries  with 
it  some  suggestion  of  their  outlook  on  na- 
tional life.  The  phases  of  society  which  a 
writer  chooses  to  emphasize  reveal  some 
measure  of  its  moral  tone,  its  intellectual  out- 
look and  its  political  condition.  Fogazzaro's 
Saint ^  haunted  by  the  problems  of  asceticism, 


22         THE  UNITED  STATES 

shows  us  the  attitude  of  the  clerical  mind  of 
Italy  with  which  that  of  England  has,  we 
see  at  once,  very  little  in  common.  Victor 
Hugo  reveals,  half  unconsciously  to  himself, 
the  crude  and  unstable  despotism  of  the  Sec- 
ond Empire  in  France  which  he  assailed. 
Dickens  lays  bare  the  mind  of  the  bourgeoisie 
and  the  lower  orders  in  England.  It  is  said 
that  translations  of  the  works  of  Dickens  are 
popular  in  China  and  the  explanation  is  of- 
fered that  it  is  because  of  a  subtle  affinity  of 
English  with  Chinese  political  thought,  the 
dislike  of  militarism  and  absolutism,  and 
with  this  a  certain  humorous  decency  con- 
genial to  Chinese  readers.  English  is  at  least 
simple  and  direct.  One  of  its  greatest  re- 
cent triumphs  is  the  use  of  the  word  "tank" 
to  describe  a  complicated  mechanism  of  mod- 
ern war.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine  the 
English  calling  a  great  avenue  the  "Champs 
Elysees"  or  naming  a  thoroughfare  the 
"Street  of  the  Twentieth  of  September." 

There  is  no  better  evidence  of  the  virility 
of  the  English  speech  than  its  changes  in 
America.  The  language  was  matured  in  the 
settled  environment  of  England,  and  it  ex- 


AND  CANADA  23 

presses  the  social  relations  of  a  graded  soci- 
ety. The  owner  of  land  let  to  tenants  is  still 
the  landlord,  though  for  the  most  part  there 
is  little  left  in  the  relation  which  is  lordly. 
In  Northumberland  the  women  who  work  in 
the  fields  are  still  called  bondagers,  but  no 
trace  remains  of  such  a  relation  in  their  de- 
meanor nor  in  their  money  wage  of  four  shil- 
lings a  day.  On  the  other  hand  the  free,  new 
life  of  western  America  knows  nothing  of 
lords  or  bondage  and  has  no  need  for  such 
terms.  It  matures  for  the  use  of  a  changed 
society  a  language  which,  at  any  rate,  never 
lacks  vigor  and  is  English  in  structure  if 
hardly  so  in  vocabulary.  The  educated 
classes  in  New  England  cultivate  a  precision 
of  speech  more  exacting  in  its  standards  than 
is  the  language  of  the  same  class  in  the 
mother  land.  In  all  fields  alike  the  English 
tongue  is  the  medium.  The  most  violent  as- 
sailant of  England,  to  make  himself  under- 
stood with  effect,  must  in  the  greater  part 
of  the  world  denounce  her  in  her  own  lan- 
guage. 

Perhaps  the  most  pregnant  fact  in  modern 
poHtical  Hfe  is  that  the  Enghsh-speaking 


24         THE  UNITED  STATES 

peoples  have  become  dominant  in  North 
America.  Columbus  was  the  servant  of 
Spain,  and  she  was  resolved  to  have  the 
greater  part  of  both  North  and  South  Amer- 
ica for  herself  and  to  permit  no  neighbors. 
Her  claim  to  rule  alone  meant  that  any  tri- 
umph of  a  rival  would  be  to  her  own  com- 
plete exclusion.  Spain  asked  the  protec- 
tion of  the  church  for  her  rights,  and  Eng- 
land, when  she  defied  the  church,  aimed  to 
make  herself  a  terror  to  Spain  in  America. 
England's  ships  haunted  the  Spanish  Main. 
In  1607  she  planted  her  foot  in  Virginia  and 
there  remained.  She  too  was  resolved  to 
have  no  neighbor,  and  when  Catholic  France 
occupied  the  valley  of  the  Saint  Lawrence, 
it  was  the  fixed  resolve  of  English  policy  for 
a  hundred  and  fifty  years  to  drive  her  out. 
I  have  sometimes  wondered  what  would  to- 
day be  the  condition  of  society  in  New  Eng- 
land had  Spain  or  France,  and  not  Eng- 
land, finally  held  its  coasts.  There  may  be 
some  doubt  as  to  whether  man  is  stronger 
than  his  environment ;  as  to  whether,  no  mat- 
ter what  the  race,  nature  would  not  have 
determined   the   physical  type.      But  it  is 


AND  CANADA  25 

quite  certain  that  England  gave  to  her  col- 
onies something  that  has  made  this  land  to- 
day mentally  different  from  what  France  or 
Spain  would  have  made  it.  The  language, 
the  rehgion,  the  manners  of  the  masses,  the 
education  of  a  New  England  town,  would 
have  been  other  than  they  are  had  Spain  or 
France  planted  here  a  new  society.  Be- 
cause the  English  race  secured  final  pos- 
session the  traditions  which  go  with  English 
rule  and  English  speech  here  took  root,  and 
the  very  spires  of  the  churches  proclaim  to 
the  air  that  the  Enghsh  seed  has  grown  to 
a  great  tree. 

America  brought  her  own  special  gifts  to 
the  civilization  of  the  world.  Old  things  and 
new  America  offered  to  Europe.  There 
were  the  coveted  gold  and  silver  of  her  mines 
to  increase  stores  in  Europe  which  had,  so 
far  as  we  know,  received  but  slight  additions 
since  the  days  of  the  Roman  Empire.  While 
this  was  not  in  reality  America's  most  pre- 
cious store  of  wealth,  it  was  the  most  allur- 
ing; and  Spain,  the  first  discoverer,  spent  her 
energies  in  search  for  the  precious  metals. 
She  had  no  labor  to  export  from  Spain,  and 


26         THE  UNITED  STATES 

so  she  enslaved  the  helpless  natives  to  do  her 
work,  and  she  thought  she  was  growing  rich 
because  her  ships  carried  across  the  sea  car- 
goes of  metal  which  in  themselves  would 
save  no  starving  man.  England  was  more 
fortunate.  Her  first  seamen,  such  as  Drake 
and  Hawkins,  thought,  indeed,  that  to  rob 
Spain's  treasure  ships  was  to  touch  the  main- 
springs of  well-being.  The  real  sources  of 
wealth  are  to  be  found,  however,  in  those 
things  which  feed  and  clothe  the  human  body 
and  stir  to  its  best  efforts  the  human  mind. 
The  EngHsh  settled  where  there  was  no  gold, 
but  where  nature  invited  to  the  hard  toil 
which  develops  character  and  to  the  adven- 
turous efforts  of  those  who  go  down  to  the 
sea  in  ships.  Spain  found  her  wealth  ready- 
made  in  gold.  England  had  to  produce 
hers,  and  perhaps  that  is  why  the  English 
speech  is  dominant  to-day  in  North  America. 
Three  staples  of  commerce  new  to  Eu- 
rope America  gave  to  the  world — tobacco, 
Indian  corn,  and  the  potato.  Without  them 
our  present-day  civilization  would  indeed  be 
poorer.  Columbus  found  the  natives  of  the 
West  Indies  smoking  and  chewing  tobacco 


AND  CANADA  27 

— a  habit  which  was  quickly  carried  to  re- 
mote parts  of  the  earth.  The  effect  upon  so- 
ciety of  a  single  natural  product  is  sometimes 
far-reaching.  It  was  upon  tobacco  that  was 
founded  Virginia,  the  first  English  colony 
in  North  America,  and  from  this  cultivation 
of  tobacco  and  later  of  cotton  came  the  en- 
slaving by  the  English  of  the  Negro,  which 
has  resulted  in  so  appalling  a  racial  problem 
of  to-day.  Indian  corn,  or  maize,  a  native 
American  product,  is  now  one  of  the  most 
important  articles  of  food.  It  is  the  great 
crop  of  the  warm,  dry,  rich  soil  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi valley,  and  it  is  also  the  chief  source 
of  human  food  in  great  regions  of  South 
Africa  and  Australia.  The  stalk  of  the  plant 
furnishes,  besides,  an  amazingly  rich  food 
for  cattle.  The  potato,  which  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  took  from  America  to  Ireland,  has 
played  since  that  day  its  striking  part  in 
human  history.  It  too  became  a  staple  food. 
The  failure  of  the  potato  crop  in  Ireland  in 
1846  caused  famine  and  rebelhon  and  minis- 
tered to  hot  racial  passions  which  still  burn. 
It  caused  also  the  first  great  migration  of 
Irish  to  America.     Not  less  in  her  natural 


28        THE  UNITED  STATES 

products  than  in  her  pohtical  institutions  has 
America  spread  far-reaching  influences  over 
the  world. 

The  real  struggle  for  North  America  lay 
between  France  and  England.  France  was 
happy  in  her  first  stroke,  for,  as  early  as  in 
1534,  nearly  a  hundred  years  before  the 
founding  of  Massachusetts,  she  was  explor- 
ing in  the  valley  of  the  Saint  Lawrence.  No 
doubt  the  climate  was  harsh,  and  by  so  much 
was  France  handicapped.  But  harsh  also 
was  the  climate  of  New  England,  and  it  had 
no  river  hke  the  Saint  Lawrence  reaching 
far  into  the  interior.  There  are  four  great 
rivers  in  North  America  draining  vast  areas. 
The  Mississippi  lies  now  wholly  within  the 
United  States  and  became  important  only 
when  an  English-speaking  people  held  both 
its  banks.  The  Mackenzie  and  the  Saskatch- 
ewan, Canadian  rivers  in  the  far  north,  both 
flow  through  inhospitable  regions,  as  yet  but 
scantily  affected  by  the  labor  of  man.  The 
fourth  great  river,  the  Saint  Lawrence,  is 
the  river  of  North  America  which  has  played 
the  most  striking  part  in  its  history.  In  all 
the  world  there  is  no  other  river  and  lake 


AND  CANADA  29 

system  so  fruitful  in  its  rewards  to  man's 
effort.  It  is  the  only  great  river  of  North 
America  flowing  into  the  Atlantic.  It 
drains  Great  Lakes  which  are  among  the 
wonders  of  the  world.  Populous  cities  have 
grown  up  on  the  shores  of  the  inland  seas 
where  the  volume  of  fresh  waters  gather  for 
that  turbulent  journey  to  the  ocean  in  which 
they  thunder  over  the  cataract  of  Niagara. 
Where  else  can  be  found  such  masses  of 
human  beings  on  a  single  river  and  lake  sys- 
tem? Here  are  Milwaukee,  Chicago,  De- 
troit, Cleveland,  Buffalo,  Toronto,  Mon- 
treal, Quebec,  and  many  other  centers  of 
wealth  and  influence.  And  at  the  portal, 
from  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
stood  France  on  guard  for  the  ownership  of 
a  continent.  By  way  of  the  waters  of  the 
Saint  Lawrence  she  reached  the  flood  of 
the  Mississippi  and  claimed  that  too  as  her 
own.  In  the  cities  lying  at  the  mouth  of  both 
rivers,  in  Quebec  and  in  New  Orleans,  her 
language  is  still  to  be  heard  in  the  streets, 
the  influence  of  her  culture  is  apparent, 
though  her  political  authority  is  gone. 
America  was  brought  into  touch  with  the 


30        THE  UNITED  STATES 

thought  of  Europe  just  when  Europe  itself 
was  experiencing  perhaps  the  greatest  up- 
heaval in  all  its  history.  In  1492,  when 
Columbus  was  penetrating  into  the  unknown 
across  the  stormy  Atlantic,  Erasmus,  a 
young  man  of  twenty-six,  was  wrestling 
with  grim  poverty  at  Paris  and  spending  the 
uncomfortable  hours  in  searching  another 
unknown,  the  unknown  of  man's  past  strug- 
gles to  emancipate  his  own  mind.  If  Colum- 
bus discovered  America,  Erasmus  helped  to 
rediscover  antiquity  and  to  open  its  treasures 
to  an  eager  world.  Two  years  after  the  first 
voyage  of  Columbus  a  conquering  French 
army  marched  across  the  Alps  into  Italy  and 
began  that  mastery  by  the  ahen  conqueror 
which  if,  for  the  time,  it  ruined  Italy,  helped 
to  expand  the  minds  of  the  invaders.  At  the 
same  time  far  away  in  the  north  a  peasant 
boy  with  a  quick  mind  and  an  inquiring  faith 
was  growing  into  the  maturity  which  made 
Martin  Luther  a  disturbing  but  vital  force 
in  the  hf  e  of  the  age.  Germany  and  France 
and  England  were  shaken  by  the  explosion 
of  new  forces,  and  just  when  the  fight  was 
keenest   in    Europe    Jacques    Cartier    was 


AND  CANADA  31 

raising  on  the  Saint  Lawrence  the  fleurs-de- 
lis  of  France. 

It  was  a  great  era.  Its  controversies 
haunt  still  our  society  and  have  played  their 
part  in  the  hardening  processes  which  have 
formed  our  modern  national  and  racial  types. 
There  were  those  who  believed  that  its  re- 
vived interest  in  art  and  learning  and  reli- 
gion meant  the  dawn  of  a  golden  age.  Thus 
it  is  that  in  all  periods  of  high  emotion  men 
have  consoled  themselves  for  the  imperfec- 
tions of  the  present  by  the  promise  of  the 
future.  The  day  of  disillusion  came  quickly. 
Before  the  end  of  the  century  Montaigne 
had  described  human  life  in  its  true  tints  of 
gray  and  brown,  with  high  lights  of  radiant 
sunshine  and  also  deep  shadows  of  suffering 
and  sorrow.  By  the  beginning  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century  America  was  to  Europe  a 
soHd  reahty,  only  half  known,  it  is  true,  but 
already  the  scene  in  which  national  and  reh- 
gious  passions  had  aroused  the  fiercest  activ- 
ities of  war.  Europe  was  torn  by  the  bitter 
antagonisms  of  Catholic  and  Protestant. 
Spain  and  Portugal  had  succeeded  in  hold- 
ing all  of  South  America  and  some  of  North 


32         THE  UNITED  STATES 

America  for  the  Catholic  faith  alone.  Eng- 
lish Protestants  who  founded  Virginia  in 
1607  were  in  a  sense  between  the  two  jaws 
of  the  Catholic  nut-cracker  with  France  in 
the  Saint  Lawrence  valley  and  Spain  in 
Mexico.  By  this  time,  however,  Spain  was 
weak  for  aggressive  purposes  and  the  strug- 
gle for  North  America  lay  between  Catholic 
France  and  Protestant  England. 

As  a  colonizing  power  in  America  France 
showed  what  marks  some  of  her  best  minds  to 
this  day,  her  passionate  belief  in  a  religious 
system  based  upon  authority  and  her  love 
of  romantic  adventure.  In  genius  for  trade 
France  has  never  greatly  excelled.  The  Eng- 
lish, seeking  overseas  new  means  of  living 
or  new  foundations  of  society  which  should 
not  involve  acceptance  of  the  dogmas  of  the 
Church  of  England,  were  severely  practical 
as  colonizers.  They  tilled  the  soil,  they  built 
ships  and  sailed  away  to  trade  in  other  lands, 
they  trafficked  with  the  natives  for  furs ;  and 
wherever  they  settled  they  made  themselves 
masters.  There  was  little  of  the  glow  of 
romance  in  their  prosaic  doings.  This,  on 
the  other  hand,  stirred  many  of  the  French, 


AND  CANADA  33 

men  in  some  cases  scions  of  noble  houses,  who 
chafed  at  the  slow  activities  of  the  farm  or 
the  shop.  The  hfe  of  the  forest  fascinated 
them.  They  became  coureurs  de  hois,  run- 
ners of  the  woods.  Past  their  doors  at  Que- 
bec and  Montreal  flowed  the  great  tide  of  the 
Saint  Lawrence  coming  from  out  the  far 
interior.  Little  wonder  that  the  mystery  of 
its  sources  haunted  them.  Step  by  step  they 
explored  the  interior.  They  discovered  one 
by  one  the  Great  Lakes;  they  reached  the 
Mississippi  and  followed  it  to  its  outlet.  On 
into  the  farther  west  they  pushed.  They 
reached  the  prairies,  they  saw  the  Rocky 
Mountains. 

The  French  are  a  virile  race.  No  other 
breed,  except  perhaps  the  Jew,  clings  to  its 
own  ideals  and  mode  of  hfe  with  such  un- 
conquerable tenacity.  To  the  French,  pride 
in  the  civiHzation  of  France  and  love  for  the 
land  of  France  are  mastering  passions.  In 
Europe  through  long  ages  they  had  fought 
the  Enghsh  and  in  America  they  had  no 
other  thought  than  to  fight  them  until  one 
should  master  the  other.  The  Enghsh  were 
of  hke  mind.    Hardly  had  they  found  them- 


34         THE  UNITED  STATES 

selves  in  Virginia  when  they  learned  that  the 
French,  long  known  to  be  on  the  Saint  Law- 
rence, had  actually  dared  in  1605  to  found 
farther  south  a  struggling  colony,  Port 
Royal,  on  the  Bay  of  Fundy,  where  now 
stands  the  httle  town  of  Annapolis,  in  Nova 
Scotia.  Such  audacity  was  too  much,  and 
in  1613,  though  France  and  England  were 
not  openly  at  war,  an  expedition  from  Vir- 
ginia destroyed  this  budding  settlement. 
The  Saint  Lawrence  was  not  to  be  secure 
for  the  French.  In  1629  the  English  ap- 
peared at  Quebec  and  captured  this  infant 
capital  of  New  France.  For  a  century  and 
a  half  the  struggle  of  one  power  to  drive  out 
the  other  hardly  ceased.  The  English  fitted 
out  expedition  after  expedition  against  Que- 
bec, and  at  Quebec  Frontenac,  the  governor, 
planned  serious  efforts  to  root  out  the  Eng- 
lish from  both  the  banks  of  the  Hudson  and 
from  New  England  and  to  make  Louis  XIV 
master  of  New  York  and  Boston.  Of  liv- 
ing peacefully  side  by  side  as  good  neighbors 
neither  nation  had  any  serious  thought.  One 
race,  one  language,  one  flag  must  be  supreme 
everywhere  in  North  America.    On  this  both 


AND  CANADA  35 

sides  were  determined.  War  followed  war. 
Peace  was  only  a  truce.  And  at  last,  In  1760, 
the  British  triumphed.  To  them  France  sur- 
rendered Canada  and  abandoned  her  long 
struggle  for  empire  in  America. 

Thus  it  was  that  the  British  acquired  all 
of  America  north  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico 
which  at  that  time  was  known  to  the  world. 
Three  types  of  possession  had  come  together 
under  one  sovereignty.  In  the  far  north  was 
the  territory  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company. 
It  had  acquired  a  generous  inheritance,  for 
King  Charles  II,  by  what  right  we  shall  not 
too  curiously  question,  had  given  it  all  the 
lands  bordering  on  the  waters  flowing  into 
Hudson  Bay,  which  meant  the  whole  vast 
prairie  land  of  the  present  Canadian  West 
stretching  away  almost  illimitably  to  the 
foothills  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  That  was 
an  empire  in  itself ;  yet  was  it  little  accounted 
of  in  the  day  of  final  conquest.  Britain  had 
always  claimed  it,  and  since  1713  France  had 
yielded  the  claim.  Next  to  this  were  the 
former  possessions  of  the  French,  that  vast 
New  France  in  which  the  Bishop  of  Quebec 
had  at  one  time  been  spiritual  lord  both  at 


36         THE  UNITED  STATES 

the  mouth  of  the  Saint  Lawrence  and  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Mississippi.  To  these  two  ter- 
ritories must  be  added  as  still  under  British 
rule  those  fine,  strong  colonies  which  were 
so  soon  to  form  the  United  States.  Never 
before  had  nation  such  a  heritage.  In  all  the 
world  elsewhere  there  are  no  such  areas  of 
rich  land  as  this  realm  included.  It  had 
possibilities  in  agriculture,  beyond  the  vision 
of  the  most  sanguine  dreamer.  It  had  wealth 
in  iron  and  coal,  the  two  great  staples  of 
industrial  life.  It  had  stores  of  gold  and 
silver  barely  equaled  in  any  other  part  of 
the  world.  In  its  wild  Hfe  it  had  the  richest 
supply  of  furs  in  the  world  and  in  its  chill 
waters  the  finest  quality  of  fish.  In  secur- 
ing North  America  Britain  had  won  indeed 
a  triumph  and  to  her  sons  and  daughters 
that  great  land  remains  still  in  possession. 

The  Seven  Years'  War  placed  England 
on  a  pinnacle  of  glory.  Pitt  declared  that 
when  peace  was  made  France  should  be  so 
humbled  and  crushed  that  never  again  should 
she  be  able  to  raise  a  hand  against  her  an- 
cient enemy.  The  English  type  had  pre- 
vailed, and  there  were  few  voices  to  whisper 


AND  CANADA  37 

that  in  human  affairs  overwhekning  victory- 
has  itself  sometimes  been  the  presage  of  com- 
ing defeat.  Macedon  and  Rome  and  Spain 
might  all  have  taught  the  lesson.  England 
then  had  what  has  been  called  the  most  envi- 
able of  the  aristocracies  in  history.  Her 
great  nobles  had  vast  landed  estates.  They 
lived  in  regal  palaces,  waited  upon  by  count- 
less servants.  Even  half  a  century  later 
Home  Tooke,  dining  alone  with  the  Marquis 
of  Lansdowne,  counted  thirty  attendants  in 
the  room.  The  great  man  traveled  on  the 
highways  with  a  pomp  that  to-day  would 
seem  extravagant  for  a  monarch.  If,  as 
Emerson  said,  twenty  thousand  Norman 
thieves  landed  in  England  in  1066  to  con- 
quer the  country,  their  descendants  had  be- 
come a  stately  nobility,  with  courtly  man- 
ners and  the  regard  for  nice  decorum  which 
we  find  expressed  in  the  pages  of  Lord 
Chesterfield.  Boswell,  with  the  provincial 
accent  of  the  Scot,  was  assured  by  the  pa- 
tronizing Dr.  Johnson  that  with  care  he 
might  almost  be  taken  for  an  Englishman. 
No  trader  entered  the  charmed  circle  of  high 
society.  This  was  not  lacking  in  virility,  for 

..      /      /      i     ^i 


38         THE  UNITED  STATES 

the  names  of  many  of  the  officers  who  fought 
and  died  on  the  battle  field  in  Europe,  in 
America,  and  in  India  are  drawn  from  this 
high  circle.  It  was  in  truth  for  the  most  part 
men  of  this  class  who  had  led  in  the  long  fight 
which  had  made  the  greater  part  of  North 
America  British  and  forever  Enghsh- 
speaking. 


AND  CANADA  39 


LECTURE  II 

THE    CREATION    OF    TWO    ENG- 
LISH-SPEAKING STATES 
IN  AMERICA 

Victory  brings  to  nations  pride  and  often 
a  touch  of  arrogance,  and  this  effect  the  com- 
plete victory  of  the  Seven  Years'  War, 
crowned  in  1763  by  a  triumphant  peace, 
brought  to  Britain.  New  sources  of  wealth 
had  been  tapped  in  India,  and  London  be- 
came more  than  ever  a  cosmopolitan  center. 
England  rewarded  the  men  who  had  brought 
her  success.  Pitt  soon  became  Earl  of  Chat- 
ham; Amherst,  the  commander-in-chief  in 
America,  was  made  a  peer :  the  name,  Mon- 
treal, of  his  seat  in  the  country  is  a  reminder 
to  this  day  of  his  American  campaigns. 
France,  on  the  other  hand,  punished  her  fail- 
ures. Lally,  who  had  finally  lost  India,  was 
done  to  death  on  the  scaffold  by  judicial 
murder  for  no  other  reason  than  that  he  had 
failed.  The  civihan  leaders  in  Canada  were 
sent  to  the  Bastille,  and  some  of  them  were 
punished  by  heavy  fines.    There  was  bitter- 


40         THE  UNITED  STATES 

ness  in  the  soul  of  the  French  and  exultation 
in  that  of  the  British.  They  had  fought 
France  ever  since  the  brave  days  of  the  Black 
Prince,  four  hundi-ed  years  earlier,  and,  at 
last,  seemed  to  have  her  under  their  feet. 
Britain  was  still  in  thought  an  island  with  a 
self-complacency  which  tended  to  make  her 
impervious  to  the  spiritual  reahties  of  the 
outside  world.  In  this  hour  of  victory  she 
ate,  she  drank,  and  she  was  merry.  No  other 
age  in  England  had  seen  equal  ostentation 
of  wealth  and  building,  such  costly  terraces 
and  gardens,  such  outlay  in  collecting  treas- 
ures of  art.  Why  not?  Were  there  not  con- 
tinents tributary  to  Britain? 

The  pomp  and  luxury  of  English  life  are, 
however,  only  half  the  story.  We  do  not 
think  wisely  when  we  underestimate  the 
eighteenth  century  in  England.  In  that  age 
is  to  be  found  the  fruitful  seed  of  most  of 
the  great  movements  of  our  own  time.  Even 
democracy,  which  has  brought  to  us  such 
complex  problems,  found  its  champions  when 
London  shouted  for  "Wilkes  and  Liberty." 
Toward  the  colonies  overseas  there  was  the 
most  benevolent  spirit.     Both  Wesley  and 


AND  CANADA  41 

Whitefield  carried  to  America  their  spir- 
itual message.  The  people  of  America 
were,  it  seemed  to  the  English,  under 
the  guardianship  of  the  motherland  which, 
for  her  part,  felt  for  them  as  a  parent 
feels  for  a  child.  The  attitude  of  London 
to  Boston  or  Philadelphia  was  that  of  finan- 
cial New  York  at  the  present  time  to  a  grow- 
ing town  in  Dakota  or  Montana.  London 
should  give  the  note.  If  the  colonies  held  to 
it,  they  were  right;  if  they  failed  to  do  so, 
by  so  much  were  they  wrong.  The  colonies 
might  not  even  have  a  bishop.  That  would  be 
to  confer  upon  them  a  spiritual  independence 
for  which  as  yet  they  were  thought  hardly 
fit.  When  they  were  grown  up,  if  they  de- 
sired it — and  many  of  them  feared  the  influ- 
ence of  a  masterful  prelate — they  should  no 
longer  be  under  the  necessity  of  sending 
across  the  sea  for  ordination  the  young  men 
who  entered  the  ministry  of  the  Church  of 
England.  Virginia  was  the  oldest  of  the 
colonies,  and  not  yet  in  Virginia  was  George 
Washington  able  to  secure  the  quality  of 
clothes  which  he  needed,  and  his  supply  came 
regularly  from  England.  The  manufactures 


42         THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  America  were  of  no  great  moment.  Eng- 
land was  the  home  of  manufacture.  Of 
course  the  trading  classes  in  England  played 
no  serious  part  in  politics.  That  was  hardly 
their  affair.  Let  them  look  after  their  fac- 
tories and  shops,  said  the  political  leaders. 
The  landed  classes  had  always  governed  and 
had  they  not  made  England  great?  Si 
quaeris  monumentum,  circumspice. 

War,  as  so  well  we  know  in  our  own  age, 
produces  upon  political  thought  an  effect 
profoundly  disturbing.  The  man  who  goes 
into  battle  has  faced  ultimate  realities  .and 
tested  values.  He  is  offering  his  life,  and 
no  man  can  do  more.  In  this  respect  the 
private  is  the  equal  of  the  field  marshal.  War 
involves  a  close  partnership  and  an  ultimate 
equahty  of  those  who  fight  together.  In  the 
nineteenth  century  little  Piedmont  with  its 
tiny  army  joined  Britain  and  France  in  the 
Crimean  War,  and  Piedmont's  prime  minis- 
ter, Cavour,  sat  with  the  envoys  of  the  great 
powers  when  the  time  came  to  discuss  peace. 
In  the  Seven  Years'  War  the  American  col- 
onies had  put  their  own  fighting  men  into  the 
field  on  a  scale  unequaled  during  any  previ- 


AND  CANADA  43 

ous  war  in  America.  The  officers  of  the  reg- 
ular British  army  considered  these  colonial 
forces  as  auxiliaries,  in  much  the  same  way 
as  now  they  regard  Indian  regiments,  use- 
ful if  controlled  and  directed  by  regular  offi- 
cers, but  without  the  traditions  and  the  train- 
ing to  give  them  any  value  if  fighting  on  their 
own  account.  This  attitude  is  always  irri- 
tating to  those  who  find  themselves  either 
despised  or  patronized,  and  it  was  especially 
irritating  after  the  colonial  forces  had  given 
manly  cooperation  in  a  great  war.  This  irri- 
tation was  one  of  the  causes  of  the  American 
Revolution. 

The  British  tended  to  look  upon  the  col- 
onies as  their  property.  A  continent  had 
come  under  British  control.  The  people 
whose  ancestors  had  long  dwelt  in  America 
thought  the  continent  was  theirs  and  had 
among  themselves  jealous  rivalries  as  to  its 
ownership.  Virginia  and  Massachusetts 
wished  to  reach  out  westward  as  far  as  the 
Mississippi;  New  York  and  New  Hamp- 
shire were  quarreling  about  boundaries. 
Life  in  America  was  vivid  in  its  vigorous 
hopes   and  its   alluring   possibilities.     The 


44         THE  UNITED  STATES 

motherland  had  always  been  far  away  and 
across  the  sea  came  from  her  only  faint 
echoes  of  the  word  of  authority.  She  was 
inferior  in  that  her  masses  had  little  political 
power  beyond  the  indirect  one  of  public  opin- 
ion unsupported  by  votes  and  expressed 
often  in  riotous  passion  rather  than  in  rea- 
son, as  witness  the  clamor  in  London  for 
Wilkes  and  Lord  George  Gordon.  Boston 
too  had  its  mobs,  but  they  read  newspapers 
and  had  been  trained  in  politics  by  their 
right  to  vote.  England  was  superior  in  that 
she  had  a  class  of  statesmen  versed  in  the 
larger  problems  of  national  policy  and 
learned  in  the  long  traditions  of  political 
thought  from  Plato  to  Burke.  In  a  real  sense 
Chatham  and  Burke  and  Fox  saw  the  world 
and  saw  it  whole.  There  was  cosmopolitan 
thinking  in  England  on  political  questions  in 
a  sense  that  makes  Samuel  Adams  and  Pat- 
rick Henry  appear  provincial.  The  history 
of  all  mankind  was  open  to  Burke  when  he 
pondered  a  problem  of  state.  The  tragedy 
was  that  the  people  who,  as  he  said,  usually 
come  to  think  right  on  public  questions  had 
no  power  which  could  respond  to  his  appeals. 


AND  CANADA  45 

We  need  not  wonder  that,  facing  new  re- 
sponsibilities, the  outcome  of  victory,  and 
bearing  new  burdens,  the  debts  of  war,  the 
British  leaders  wished,  above  all,  security  for 
the  future.  It  was  a  part  of  their  world 
outlook  that  they  felt  themselves  as  fully 
responsible  for  the  men  of  their  own  race  in 
America  as  they  did  for  the  dependent 
people  in  India.  To  this  day  Britain  admits 
the  principle  that  she  guards  the  safety  of 
every  foot  of  British  territory  in  no  matter 
what  part  of  the  world.  The  American  col- 
onies were  her  charge,  as  in  time  of  danger 
they  were  ready  enough  to  claim.  It  was 
certain  that  defeated  France  would  try  to 
recover  her  lost  territories  in  America.  She 
had  influence  among  the  natives,  and  her 
agents  were  assuring  them  that  the  king  of 
France  was  still  their  father  and  leader.  The 
war  had  scarcely  ended  when,  in  1764,  there 
were  plots,  risings,  hideous  massacres  on  the 
western  frontiers  of  the  Enghsh  colonies. 
Britain  asked  them  to  help  with  their  own 
defense.  They  were  disunited,  heated  by 
their  own  rivalries,  and  suspicious  with  their 
own  jealousies.  They  hesitated,  delayed,  and 


46         THE  UNITED  STATES 

did  nothing.  Then  Britain,  regarding  the 
men  of  Massachusetts  and  Virginia  as  her 
own  sons,  in  the  same  sense  as  she  regarded 
the  men  of  Devon  and  Cornwall,  told  them 
their  duty,  and,  since  they  had  not  themselves 
met  her  appeal,  she  undertook  to  tax  them. 
At  once  was  it  seen  that  they  were  Enghsh- 
men  with  a  difference.  They  were  English 
as  Hampden  was  Enghsh  in  refusing  to  pay 
taxes  imposed  without  their  consent.  But 
in  a  real  sense  they  were  not  English,  for 
they  sent  no  members  to  the  Parliament 
in  London  and  considered  the  little  legis- 
lature of  each  colony  as  the  seat  of  final 
authority. 

In  the  struggle  which  followed  each  side 
fell  back  upon  abstract  right  and  each  had 
for  its  support  some  real  measure  of  reason. 
It  was  right  that  the  colonists,  with  a  conti- 
nent just  won  for  their  own  secure  future, 
should  pay ;  it  was  also  right  that  they  should 
not  pay  except  by  their  own  free  action. 
They  were  not  children  to  be  coerced  by  a 
parent.  English  Tory  opinion  considered 
the  colonists  ingrates ;  while  colonial  opinion 
regarded  George  III  as  a  would-be  tyrant 


AND  CANADA  47 

and  his  ministers  as  craven  tools '  of  their 
master.  It  is  not  easy  to  understand  the 
Enghsh  pohtical  system.  To  our  time,  in- 
deed, no  one  can  read  it  correctly  who  does 
not  feel  the  silent,  secret  pressure  of  the 
forces  under  a  constitutional  monarchy  by 
which  is  adjusted  from  day  to  day  the  bal- 
ance between  ancient  forms  and  traditions 
)and  the  reality  of  power  exercised  by  the  rep- 
resentatives of  the  people.  George  III  made 
his  ministers  his  tools,  and  for  a  time,  brief 
enough  but  by  so  much  too  long,  was  master 
of  the  government  of  England. 

No  passions  are  more  extreme  than  those 
of  a  class  which  has  built  up  rights  on  privi- 
lege and  then  finds  its  claim  to  power  denied. 
Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  was  in  his  heart  a  good, 
just,  and  reasonable  man,  who  did  not  know 
that  when  he  spoke  of  the  colonies  in  terms 
of  extravagant  contempt  he  was  merely  echo- 
ing the  tone  of  wealth  and  arbitrary  power  in 
which  he  himself  had  no  share.  These  people 
in  America  had  dared  to  say  that  they  could 
think  and  fight  for  themselves,  and  this 
seemed  as  ridiculous  as  if  Hampshire  should 
defy  England.    Only  the  pressure  of  Amer- 


48         THE  UNITED  STATES 

ican  resistance  and  success  made  the  great 
landowners  who  really  governed  England 
even  think  of  what  was  happening  in  Amer- 
ica. Never  in  domestic  affairs  had  party 
f eehng  been  more  bitter  or  political  intrigue 
more  active.  In  such  things  America  was  an 
unwelcome  intruder.  England,  after  all,  was 
in  Europe,  and  it  was  issues  nearer  home 
which  interested  EngHsh  statesmen  when 
they  gave  their  minds  to  politics.  They  had, 
however,  many  other  things  to  occupy  them ; 
building  and  ornamentation,  sports  and 
farming.  Even  the  Whigs  did  not  see  at 
first  what  the  quarrel  in  America  meant. 
And  in  the  background  was  an  ignorant  and 
intriguing  young  ruler  with  a  worn-out  the- 
ory of  kingship  in  his  mind  and  a  perverse 
and  restless  activity  of  thought  which  made 
it  literally  necessary  to  get  up  very  early  in 
the  morning  to  be  ahead  of  him.  He  was  in 
reality  Carolus  Primus  Redivivus  in  a  world 
which  had  outgrown  the  Stuart  conception  of 
monarchy. 

When  a  claim  to  authority  which  has  long 
seemed,  if  not  dead,  at  least  harmless,  once 
again  becomes  menacing,  it  is  likely  to  arouse 


AND  CANADA  49 

both  alarm  and  anger.  The  colonies  had 
thought  that  what  is  sometimes  called  the 
omnipotence  of  Parliament  was  only  a  the- 
ory, inoperative  as  far  as  they  were  con- 
cerned; but  now  Parliament  claimed  the 
right  to  tax  them  independently  of  their  o^n 
legislatures.  This  stirred  alarm  to  such  a 
point  that  the  colonies  saw  in  eveiy  action  of 
Britain  afiectmg  them  some  sinister  design 
against  their  liberties.  The  Quebec  Act, 
passed  in  1774,  was  in  realil;y  a  quite  harm- 
less measure  intended  to  provide  for  good 
government  and  content  in  the  regions  lately 
taken  from  France.  It  granted  the  con- 
quered people  the  right  to  retain  the  French 
civil  law  and  the  full  liberties  of  their  reli- 
gious system.  This  liberality  to  a  helpless 
people  is,  however,  denounced  in  the  Dec- 
laration of  Independence  as  only  a  beginning 
of  an  effort  to  impose  French  despotism  on 
all  the  colonies  and  to  revive  the  horrors  of 
the  Inquisition  against  the  Protestants  of 
the  New  World.  No  colonial  leader  pointed 
out  the  himior  of  such  designs  imputed  to  the 
bigoted  Protestant  George  III.  Alarms  so 
fantastic    were    fortified  by  the  anger  of 


50         THE  UNITED  STATES 

wounded  pride.  The  Virginian,  Washing- 
ton, regarded  himself  as  the  pohtical  equal 
of  any  man  Hving,  and  was  filled  with  con- 
temptuous rage  at  any  limitation  of  his  dig- 
nity as  a  free  man.  The  cosmopohtan  Frank- 
lin was  as  bitter  as  Washington,  and  both 
showed  a  stern  hatred  of  those  among  their 
countrymen  who  seemed  willing  to  admit  the 
claims  made  on  behalf  of  the  king.  To  the 
outraged  American  sense  of  pohtical  dignity 
the  Tory  Loyalists  were  the  scum  of  the 
earth,  unfit  to  live.  Neither  side  in  the  strug- 
gle was  wholly  united.  The  Enghsh  ^AHiig 
praised  the  rebellious  colonists  as  the  truest 
patriots ;  the  Tory  in  America  was  always  a 
factor  checking  those  in  arms  against  the 
king. 

Each  side  had  one  dominant  thought — 
that  of  preserving  a  far-spreading  political 
union.  The  continued  unity  of  the  British 
Empire  is  a  political  ideal  for  which  many 
thousands  of  brave  men  would  to-day  be 
willing  to  die.  At  the  present  moment  of 
victory  after  a  long  war  it  would  prove  a 
terrible  blow  to  Britain's  position  if  the  Brit- 
ish nations  which  have  united  against  a  com- 


AND  CANADA  51 

mon  enemy  should  themselves  fall  apart.  As 
intense  was  the  desire  after  the  victory 
crowned  by  peace  in  1763  to  hold  together  all 
the  lands  which  were  British.  In  America 
there  was  another  ideal  of  unity,  at  first  not 
irreconcilable  with  the  desire  to  remain  Brit- 
ish. This  ideal  was  that  America  should  be 
united,  that  protests  against  the  poHcy  of  the 
motherland  should  include  all  that  was  Brit- 
ish in  America  and  be  continental  in  charac- 
ter. The  Congress  was  from  the  first  called 
Continental.  Washington  had  a  desire  al- 
most passionate  to  include  Canada  and  Nova 
Scotia  with  the  thirteen  other  colonies.  One 
of  his  fii'st  problems  after  taking  up  the  com- 
mand in  July,  1775,  concerned  the  steps  to 
be  taken  to  effect  this  end  and  the  twofold 
invasion  of  Canada  followed.  Both  the  Brit- 
ish and  the  American  ideal  failed  of  realiza- 
tion. The  British  union  was  broken  up. 
The  American  continental  union  was  never 
created.  Of  the  first  the  great  republic  of 
the  United  States  stretching  from  ocean  to 
ocean  is  the  result;  of  the  second  monarchi- 
cal Canada,  stretching,  too,  from  Atlantic  to 
Pacific,  is  to-day  the  impressive  outcome. 


52         THE  UNITED  STATES 

The  continent  was  to  be  English-speaking, 
but  it  was  not  to  be  one  politically. 

Small  seeds  produce  great  fruits,  and  it 
was  seemingly  but  a  small  thing  which  kept 
Canada  out  of  the  American  Union.  The 
American  invaders  in  1775  were  in  posses- 
sion of  all  of  settled  Canada  on  the  Saint 
Lawrence  which  lay  west  of  Quebec.  In  the 
whole  of  Canada  (including  civilians  and  sol- 
diers alike)  dwelt  less  than  two  thousand 
British.  There  were,  perhaps,  eighty  thou- 
sand French.  But  they  felt  no  deep  devotion 
to  the  British  crown.  Two  things  held  Can- 
ada to  its  British  allegiance:  one  was  a  few 
British  soldiers  in  the  fortress  of  Quebec  un- 
der a  leader,  General  Carleton,  who  hurled 
a  contemptuous  defiance  at  his  "rebel"  as- 
sailants; the  other  was  the  suspicion  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  leaders  of  the  Protestant 
and  Puritan  English,  who  even  in  Congress 
had  denounced  their  church  as  a  bloody  tyr- 
anny. If  the  masses  in  Canada  were  not 
alert  on  this  point,  the  church  itself  watched 
and  proved  impervious  even  to  the  seduc- 
tions of  a  master  of  diplomacy  like  Franklin 
when  he  went  on  a  mission  to  Montreal.  The 


AND  CANADA  53 

British  fleet  gave  the  final  decision  by  timely 
arrival  at  Quebec  in  the  spring  of  1776,  and 
then  Britain  remained  firmly  entrenched  in 
North  America.  It  is  one  of  the  amusing 
paradoxes  of  history  that  because  Canada 
had  been  French  it  was  destined  in  the  hour 
of  danger  to  remain  British  when  nearlv  ail 
that  was  of  British  creation  in  America 
broke  from  the  old  allegiance. 

A  new  type  of  citizen  now  appeared  in 
Canada.  Ever  since  the  blustering  days  in 
March,  1776,  when  many  hundreds  of  weep- 
ing exiles  had  crowded  on  ships  in  Boston 
harbor  in  flight  before  the  impending  sur- 
render of  the  city  to  Washington,  there  had 
been  a  stream  of  exiles  into  the  lands  which 
now  form  Canada.  They  were  sad  at  leav- 
ing homes  which  they  or  their  ancestors  had 
created  in  the  English  colonies,  and  they 
were  angry  on  account  of  the  causes  of  their 
exile.  Some  of  them  were  educated ;  the  best 
blood  of  Massachusetts  and  New  York — and 
it  was  in  many  cases  the  best  blood  of  Eng- 
land too — flowed  in  their  veins.  Some  of 
them  were  rough  and  ignorant.  Because 
they  had  held  to  their  British  allegiance  they 


54         THE  UNITED  STATES 

had  lost  their  property ;  they  themselves  had 
been  social  outcasts,  the  victims  of  outrage 
by  clamorous  mobs ;  they  had  been  obliged  to 
take  the  long  and  weary  path  to  exile;  and 
now  they  were  forced  to  hew  out  new  homes 
for  themselves  in  a  land  of  stiff  forests  and 
wintry  snows.  Some  of  them  would  have 
been  glad  if  each  stroke  of  the  axe  to  make 
their  clearings  might  have  been  a  stroke  at 
the  neck  of  a  hated  "rebel"  who  had  profited 
by  driving  out  his  loyalist  neighbor.  It  was 
in  this  spirit  that  English-speaking  Canada 
was  begun.  If  the  colonies  were  bitter 
against  England,  Canada  was  bitter  against 
the  colonies.  In  the  heat  of  these  emotions 
were  founded  the  two  English-speaking 
states  of  to-day. 

At  the  heart  of  each  of  them  was  an  idea 
which  seemed  irreconcilably  opposed  to  the 
thought  of  the  other.  In  the  minds  of  the 
founders  of  the  American  republic  was 
deeply  rooted  the  conception  that  they  were 
bringing  forth  a  pohtical  creation,  "con- 
ceived,'* as  Abraham  Lincoln  said,  "in  lib- 
erty," of  import  for  all  mankind,  and  mark- 
ing the  dawn  of  a  new  day.     They  were 


AND  CANADA  55 

proud  that  this  system  was  not  a  survival 
from  the  past,  but  a  new  thing.  Some  of 
them  felt  like  doing  what  the  revolutionists 
in  France  did  a  few  years  later,  marking  the 
era  by  making  the  date  of  its  beginning  day 
one  of  year  one  of  an  epoch  of  new  hopes  and 
new  achievements  for  human  life.  It  was 
because  this  thing  was  so  fresh  and  so  sacred 
that  the  fathers  of  the  American  Constitu- 
tion debated  earnestly  about  safeguards  and 
checks  and  balances.  They  feared  lest  de- 
signing selfishness  might  mar  the  sacred  edi- 
fice which  they  reared.  They  desired  that 
to  the  oppressed  of  all  mankind  a  new  door 
of  hope  should  remain  open  for  the  pui'suit 
of  liberty  and  happiness.  America  was  itself 
new,  a  continent  almost  untouched.  Prov- 
idence seemed  to  have  reserved  it  for  this 
last  and  greatest  achievement. 

The  traveler  of  to-day  who  visits  the  great 
cataract  of  Niagara  and  follows  the  majestic 
river  to  its  discharge  in  Lake  Ontario  will 
see  at  its  mouth  the  symbols  of  two  great  his- 
torical movements.  The  river  is  the  frontier 
between  the  United  States  and  Canada  and 
on  the  right  bank  is  a  fort  over  the  white 


56        THE  UNITED  STATES 

walls  of  which,  in  a  pleasant  setting  of  green 
trees,  floats  the  Stars  and  Stripes;  while 
across  the  river  on  the  left  bank  is  a  mihtary 
camp  where  floats  the  Union  Jack.  Here  on 
the  Canadian  side  in  1792,  five  years  after; 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  had 
been  drawn  up,  was  brought  into  being  a  new 
state  based  on  unbroken  British  tradition. 
The  creation  of  the  new  Canada  had  been 
much  debated  across  the  sea  in  Great  Britain. 
Pitt  and  Burke  and  Fox  had  taken  part  in 
the  discussion.  No  longer  was  Canada  only 
French  and  Catholic.  No  longer  could  it 
be  ruled  under  the  despotic  principles  of 
military  conquest.  Fifty  or  sixty  thousand 
Loyalists  had  taken  refuge  in  British  North 
America  and  must  be  given  the  political  lib- 
erties of  Englislimen.  Nor  could  these  be 
denied  to  their  French  fellow-citizens  in  Can- 
ada. Accordingly,  we  now  have  what  had 
been  New  France  divided  into  two  colonies. 
One  was  to  have  a  legislature  to  sit  at  Que- 
bec, the  other  was  also  to  have  a  legislature 
with  Niagara,  and  later  Toronto,  as  its  capi- 
tal. To  Niagara  in  1792  came  the  first  gov- 
ernor to  set  up  the  new  government.     He 


AND  CANADA  57 

was  Colonel  Simcoe,  a  member  of  the  Brit- 
ish Parhament,  a  Devonshire  squire,  but 
above  all  a  soldier.  He  had  served  in  Amer- 
ica during  the  American  Revolution  and  was 
one  of  the  gallant  band  of  officers  with  Corn- 
wallis  when  in  1781  he  surrendered  at  York- 
town.  To  Simcoe  the  American  republican 
system  was  anathema.  He  clung  passion- 
ately to  the  old  loyalties  and  here  he  was  in 
1792  the  leader  in  an  effort  to  reconsecrate 
and  continue  them  in  North  America.  Far 
away  in  that  other  Canadian  capital,  Que- 
bec, Sir  Guy  Carleton,  now  Lord  Dorches- 
ter, who  had  commanded  at  New  York  until 
the  last  LoyaHst  had  been  secure  in  his  pro- 
tection, was  directing  another  government 
for  the  French  province.  It  is  typical  of 
the  attitude  of  Canada  toward  the  new  re- 
public that  two  prominent  soldiers  who  had 
fought  against  the  American  Revolution 
should  have  presided  over  the  political  crea- 
tion of  the  new  Canada.  One  capital  was 
soon  shifted  from  Niagara  to  Toronto,  and 
to  this  day  there  and  at  Quebec  laws  are 
made  and  justice  is  administered  in  the  name 
of  King  George. 


58         THE  UNITED  STATES 

The  eighteenth  century  had  little  experi- 
ence of  republics  and  no  great  love  for  them. 
Switzerland  was  the  only  stable  republic  in 
Europe,  and  it  was  a  loose  federation  of 
small  states,  safe  in  their  obscurity,  until,  a 
little  later,  they  should  happen  to  stand 
across  the  path  of  a  soldier  like  Napoleon, 
who  would  then  use  them  as  he  pleased.  The 
Venetian  republic  had  a  long  and  notable 
history,  but  it  was  in  the  control  of  a  privi- 
leged oligarchy  and  its  days  were  numbered. 
That  a  republic  could  not  endure  was  a 
staple  of  Europe's  political  thinking.  Thus, 
to  many,  the  United  States  by  becoming  a 
republic  was  taking  an  easy  path  to  destruc- 
tion. It  was  monarchy  which  could  hold  and 
save  Canada  in  a  system  intended,  as  Simcoe 
said,  to  be  the  very  image  and  transcript  of 
that  of  Great  Britain.  Those  were  days  of 
Tory  rule  in  England,  and,  in  spite  of  Whig 
protests,  Canada  was  to  be  modeled  on  the 
Tory  ideal.  Religion,  if  only  it  were  Prot- 
estant, should  be  endowed  by  the  state. 
There  was  to  be  a  landed  aristocracy,  and  the 
squire  was  to  be  the  leader  in  rural  commu- 
nities as  he  was  in  England.    There  was  to 


AND  CANADA  59 

be  a  second  chamber  in  the  legislature, 
where  in  due  course  the  members  of  a  Cana- 
dian peerage  should  sit  by  right  of  birth  and 
rank.  Stubborn  conditions  will  not,  how- 
ever, lend  themselves  to  making  one  political 
society  the  exact  copy  of  another.  They  for- 
bade that  Canada  should  have  squires  and 
peers.  Neither  are  to  be  found  in  the  Legis- 
lature which  still  sits  at  Toronto,  and  there 
is  not  even  a  second  chamber.  A  House  of 
Lords  was  in  truth  no  necessary  accompani- 
ment of  the  British  ideal.  What  was  vital, 
the  continuance  of  unbroken  tradition,  linked 
with  the  institution  of  monarchy,  remains, 
and  one  may  hazard  the  opinion  that  to  this 
day  it  is  as  strong  among  the  legislators  who 
sit  in  Toronto  as  it  is  among  those  who  sit 
in  London. 

If  the  traveler  to  Niagara  had  happened 
to  drop  in  upon  Simcoe  on  the  morning  of 
September  17,  1792,  he  would  have  found  a 
stirring  scene.  There  were  clearings  along 
the  river  and  already  a  goodly  number  of 
settlers;  but,  for  the  most  part,  the  eye  would 
fall  upon  dark  masses  of  forest,  already  be- 
ginning to  show  the  tints  of  autumn.    Sim- 


60         THE  UNITED  STATES 

coe  had  issued  a  proclamation  inviting  set- 
tlers to  come  into  his  province — but  on  one 
condition:  they  must  take  oath  to  support  to 
the  utmost  of  their  power  the  authority  of 
King  and  Parhament.  There  were  already 
more  than  ten  thousand  people  in  the  prov- 
ince, an  election  had  taken  place  for  mem- 
bers of  the  legislature,  and  now  on  this  day 
Simcoe,  as  representing  the  king,  was  about 
to  open  the  first  session  with  pomp  as  nearly 
regal  as  he  could  make  it.  He  could,  in  truth, 
as  far  as  military  parade  went,  make  a  brave 
show.  He  had  soldiers  enough;  there  was 
abundance  of  red  coats  and  pipe  clay;  and 
Simcoe  could  array  himself  and  his  men  in 
uniforms  as  fitting  as  those  at  Westminster 
for  the  opening  of  Parliament.  On  the  banks 
of  the  wonderful  river  stood  the  rude  Free- 
masons' hall  where  met  for  the  time  the 
Houses  of  Parhament.  Cannon  boomed  out 
the  royal  salute.  The  two  Houses  gathered 
in  the  Upper  Chamber,  and  Simcoe  read  the 
Speech  from  the  Throne  to  the  assembled 
legislators.  There  were,  it  is  true,  only  nine 
members  of  the  Upper  House,  which  he 
hoped  some  day  might  be  a  House  of  Lords, 


AND  CANADA  61 

and  sixteen  of  the  Lower  House.  They  were 
plaui  farmers  and  storekeepers  from  homes 
rough  enough,  but  they  knew  what  they  were 
about.  One  of  the  first  things  they  did  was 
to  enact  that  Enghsh  law  should  run  in  the 
province,  and  then  they  proceeded  to  pro- 
vide a  courthouse  for  each  district  and  with  it 
a  jail  for  offenders.  Slavery  had  akeady 
a  footing  in  the  country.  Indians  had  sold 
captive  negroes  to  the  settlers,  who  found 
their  labor  valuable.  But  slavery  was 
quickly  ended.  The  old  traditions  of  Eng- 
land and  England's  law  still  stood  firmly 
intrenched  in  North  America. 

It  was  a  far  cry  from  Simcoe's  littl':  capi- 
tal to  that  of  his  fellow  soldier  Washington. 
In  this  same  year,  1792,  Washington  was 
elected  for  his  second  term  as  President  of 
the  United  States.  The  two  English-speak- 
ing countries  thus  started  each  in  its  new 
course  at  about  the  same  time.  Washington 
administered  a  Constitution  which,  as  its  cre- 
ators fondly  hoped,  contained  the  best  from 
every  system.  It  has  endured,  and  under  it 
at  the  present  time  are  governed  nearly  twice 
as  many  English-speaking  people  as  are  to 


62         THE  UNITED  STATES 

be  found  in  the  whole  British  Empire.  The 
belief  of  Europe  that  a  republic  could  not 
endure  has  been  falsified.  It  has  borne  the 
sternest  test  that  a  pohtical  system  can  en- 
dure— that  of  civil  war.  At  times  every  con- 
stitution seems  to  lumber  heavily  and  the 
American  Constitution  is  no  exception. 
Montesquieu  had  said  that  "when  the  leg- 
islative and  executive  powers  are  united  in 
the  same  person  .  .  .  there  can  be  no  liberty," 
and  the  f  ramers  of  the  Constitution  accepted 
his  teaching  that  "power  should  be  a  check 
to  power."  The  result  has  been  that  at  times 
in  the  history  of  the  United  States  one  power 
has  checked  another  to  the  detriment  of  the 
real  interests  of  the  nation.  Congress  has 
thwarted  and  defied  the  head  of  the  execu- 
tive government,  and  the  head  of  the  execu- 
tive government  has  thwarted  and  defied 
Congress,  until  there  has  been  thought  of 
turning  to  that  parliamentary  government 
which  in  the  British  system  makes  the  legis- 
lative authority  supreme  over  the  executive. 
In  the  British  system,  however,  there  has 
been  a  similar  defect  taking  a  different  form. 
During  generations  the  hereditary  House  of 


AND  CANADA  63 

Lords  has  thwarted  the  will  of  the  elected 
House  of  Commons  and  paralyzed  the  au- 
thority of  the  representatives  of  the  people. 
No  political  system  can  claim  exemption 
from  defects  or  a  monopoly  of  advantages. 
In  Canada  the  working  of  the  traditional 
British  system  was  far  from  smooth.  The 
governor  sent  out  from  Great  Britain  long 
claimed  that  a  colony  was  unlike  the  mother- 
land, since,  in  a  colony,  the  final  exercise  of 
executive  authority  rested  with  the  appointed 
governor,  who  was  under  no  compulsion  to 
adopt  the  responsible  government  operating 
in  England.  The  issue  was  fought  out  in 
long  and  troubled  controversy.  In  1837  and 
1838  there  was  armed  rebellion  in  support  of 
full  responsible  government.  Not  until  1849 
was  the  principle  established  that  the  Cana- 
dian Legislature  could  make  and  unmake  at 
its  discretion  the  ministries  carrying  on  the 
government.  The  prime  minister  then  ap- 
peared in  Canadian  politics,  as  long  since  he 
had  appeared  in  EngHsh  politics,  and  since 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  two 
English-speaking  peoples  have  Hved  side  by 
side  in  North  America,  one  a  repubhc  with  a 


64         THE  UNITED  STATES 

new  type  of  government,  the  other  existing 
under  the  traditions  of  the  old  British  mon- 
archy with  changes,  in  effect,  though  rarely 
in  form,  which  make  it  the  expression  of  po- 
litical forces  operating  in  their  most  recent 
developments  in  a  democratic  society. 


AND  CANADA  65 


LECTURE  III 

THE  GROWTH  OF  FEDERALISM 
IN  NORTH  AMERICA 

In  face  of  any  new  illustrations  of  the 
unity  of  the  man  of  to-day  with  his  own  past 
some  will  murmur  that  history  repeats  itself 
and  that  there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun. 
This  is  true  of  man's  spirit  in  the  same  sense 
that  it  is  true  of  external  nature.  All  the  ele- 
ments are  there,  but  they  are  capable  of  vary- 
ing combinations.  It  is  in  these  combinations 
that  the  unexpected  is  to  be  found.  When 
some  vision  is  outlined  of  what  hmnan  soci- 
ety may  become  in  the  future  a  certain  type 
of  cynic  is  apt  to  dismiss  the  prospect  with 
the  remark  that  "human  nature  does  not 
change."  Indeed  it  does  not  any  more  than 
nature  herself  changes.  In  her  remain  al- 
ways the  elements  found  in  mother  earth,  the 
sun,  the  wind,  the  rain,  and  the  changing 
seasons.  But,  even  under  the  control  of 
pigmy  man,  these  forces  may  be  combined 
and  re-combined,  without  change  in  their 


66        THE  UNITED  STATES 

ultimate  quality,  until  here  is  a  desert,  like 
that  at  the  present  moment  of  a  strip  of 
France,  three  hundred  and  fifty  miles  long, 
and  elsewhere  a  smiling  garden,  a  noble 
building,  or  a  picture  gallery.  Human  na- 
ture does  not  change.  It,  like  external  na- 
ture, is  under  the  laws  of  its  own  being.  But 
the  combinations  of  its  energies  change 
under  the  control  of  man's  own  will.  In  his 
hands  are  the  issues  of  justice  and  injustice, 
of  war  and  peace,  of  ultimate  decency  or  of 
ultimate  brutality. 

Pascal  outlined  the  course  of  human  his- 
tory in  his  saying  that  "all  mankind  in  the 
course  of  the  ages  is  as  one  man  who  exists 
forever  and  who  is  eternally  learning."  The 
child  is  father  of  the  man,  but  the  man  is  not 
the  child.  He  has  passed  into  another  phase 
of  life,  the  expression  of  all  his  past.  To 
his  enduring  qualities  of  character  have  been 
added  experience,  knowledge — if  you  like, 
disillusion.  He  looks  out  upon  the  world 
with  a  calmer  deliberation,  a  more  penetrat- 
ing insight.  It  is  a  commonplace  to  say  that 
it  is  we,  and  not  our  forefathers,  who  are  the 
true  ancients,  for  we  survey  the  longer  ex- 


AND  CANADA  67 

panse  of  human  action.  Out  of  the  past  of 
man's  needs  and  aspirations  is  being  eternally 
evolved  in  society  some  new  thing.  In  poH- 
tics  the  English-speaking  people  in  particu- 
lar are  incessantly  creating  fresh  applications 
of  old  principles.  We  shall  find  in  the  Poli- 
tics of  Aristotle  some  of  the  most  far-reach- 
ing principles  affecting  man  as  a  political 
animal.  The  amazing  insight  of  the  Greek 
thinker  laid  bare  for  all  time  the  sources  in 
man  of  all  the  tangled  web  of  self-interest, 
intrigue,  idealism,  and  sacrifice  which  we  call 
politics.  He  saw  these  operating  in  little 
states,  based  on  the  principle  of  slavery.  He 
could  not  foresee  that  on  the  hillsides  of  Ju- 
dsea  would  be  preached  by  a  sad-faced 
teacher  a  doctrine  of  man's  brotherhood 
which  should  in  time  exorcise  the  spirit  of 
slavery  from  the  hearts  of  those  who  accepted 
his  teaching.  He  could  not  foresee  that  when 
England  gave  the  world  the  idea  of  repre- 
sentative government  the  large  state  would 
come  into  being  composed  of  freemen  who 
should  choose  representatives  to  make  laws 
and  levy  taxes.  He  could  not  foresee  new 
conditions  in  a  New  World   out   of  which 


68         THE  UNITED  STATES 

should  come  vast  states  governed  under  fed- 
eral institutions  like  in  some  ways,  and  yet 
unlike  what  Greece  herself  had  produced. 

The  most  striking  phase  of  modern  politi- 
cal society  is  found  in  the  wide  extent  of  the 
individual  state  combined  with  government 
on  the  basis  of  representative  institutions.  It 
is  not  easy  to  explain  why  the  big  state  has 
seemed  to  become  necessary.  The  individual 
may  certainly  be  as  happy  in  the  small  state 
as  in  the  large  one.  In  the  small  state  he 
counts  for  more  and  is  in  some  respects  freer, 
for  the  smaller  community  can  give  consid- 
eration to  personal  needs  in  a  way  impossible 
in  the  great  one;  it  is,  for  instance,  noticed 
in  the  United  States  that  federal  law  is  exe- 
cuted with  more  unvarying  rigor  than  is 
state  law.  Perhaps  we  owe  the  large  state 
of  our  time  to  the  facility  of  intercourse 
which  is  possible  in  modern  society.  In 
earher  times  in  Europe  (and  the  same  is  true 
to  this  day  in  the  backward  parts  of  the 
world)  communities  only  a  few  miles  apart 
had  little  in  common  and  felt  no  need  of 
union.  Printing  has  brought  the  easy  circu- 
lation of  ideas,  so  that  men  who  never  see 


AND  CANADA  69 

each  other  learn  to  agree  or  to  differ  on 
questions  that  arise.  Out  of  such  reflection 
comes  political  action  on  a  broader  scale  than 
was  possible  in  the  days  of  isolation.  With 
common  ideas  come  movement,  inquiry,  and 
travel.  The  Wars  of  the  Roses,  just  at  the 
time  when  printing  was  discovered,  began 
the  shattering  of  the  isolation  of  English  f  eu- 
dahsm,  and  out  of  this  came  the  centralized 
Tudor  monarchy,  an  authority  unquestion- 
ably supreme  over  the  whole  land.  Henry 
VIII  boasted  in  his  pride  that  no  other  mon- 
arch dare  look  him  in  the  face.  One  great 
state  made  others  necessary.  Soon  Richeheu 
made  France  a  centralized  monarchy,  and 
from  that  age  the  evolution  of  the  great  state 
has  been  the  most  absorbing  factor  in  poli- 
tics. Representative  institutions  have  helped 
to  make  the  large  state,  since  under  them  the 
electors  need  not,  as  in  the  Greek  republic, 
come  together  in  one  place  to  vote,  but  could 
send  from  each  locality  men  chosen  to  act 
for  them. 

When  the  thirteen  colonies  were  changed 
by  their  political  independence  into  thirteen 
sovereign  states  it  was  certain  that,  if  they 


70         THE  UNITED  STATES 

obeyed  the  spirit  of  the  time,  they  would 
form  some  kind  of  political  union.  Among 
the  thirteen  were  bitter  jealousies  and  rival- 
ries, but  over  all  lesser  interests  was  domi- 
nant the  need  of  the  big  state.  Complete 
amalgamation  was  neither  possible  nor  desir- 
able. The  states  were  of  differing  types. 
Even  in  New  England,  Connecticut  was  un- 
like Massachusetts.  When  John  Adams,  of 
Massachusetts,  first  visited  New  York  and 
Philadelphia  he  was  as  alert  to  note  differ- 
ences as  is  a  Parisian  in  London.  Georgia, 
lying  hundreds  of  miles  away,  in  days,  too, 
when  roads  and  bridges  were  either  bad  or 
lacking,  and  travel  was  slow,  had,  like  Vir- 
ginia, a  different  type  of  society,  with  negro 
slavery  at  the  basis  of  the  system.  Thus  it 
was  that  out  of  differences  and  distance,  out 
of  war  and  the  danger  of  war,  out  of  a  com- 
bined particularism  and  cosmopohtanism 
came  in  America  the  necessity  of  federal 
union,  if  it  was  to  be  union  at  all.  Under 
such  a  system  the  big  state  and  the  little  state 
might  be  only  different  aspects  of  one  whole. 
From  the  new  conditions  of  life  in  America 
was  evolved  a  new  type  of  poHtical  society, 


AND  CANADA  71 

which  was  to  prove  of  absorbing  interest  to 
all  mankind  and  to  be  copied  in  Europe, 
Austraha,  and  Africa,  as  well  as  in  all  parts 
of  the  two  continents  of  America. 

Federal  government  involves  division  of 
power  between  a  central  government  and  a 
state  or  provincial  government.  This  is  per- 
haps its  most  obvious  feature,  but  it  is  not 
the  whole  story.  If,  in  some  aspects,  the 
whole  controls  the  parts  in  a  federal  system, 
the  parts  must,  in  their  turn,  control  the 
whole.  The  British  Commonwealth,  leaving 
out  of  sight  the  self-governing  Dominions, 
is  made  up  of  states,  such  as  the  great  Em- 
pire of  India  and  large  colonies  like  Jamaica, 
which  have  their  legislatures  and  a  consider- 
able measure  of  self-government,  and  are  at 
the  same  time  under  a  central  authority,  but 
the  Commonwealth  is  not  a  federation,  for 
these  parts  have  no  share  in  this  central  au- 
thority. In  a  real  federation  like  the  United 
States,  while  the  government  at  Washington 
legislates  for  Connecticut  and  Idaho,  these 
in  their  turn  elect  representatives  who  play 
their  due  part  in  carrying  on  the  government 
at  Washington.    Under  the  terms  of  a  writ- 


72         THE  UNITED  STATES 

ten  agreement,  called  a  constitution,  the 
division  of  power  is  definitely  marked.  A 
federation,  it  has  been  said,  is  made,  not  born. 
It  is  not,  like  the  mass  of  law  and  custom 
composing  the  so-called  British  constitution, 
a  growth,  which  can  shift  from  day  to  day 
the  incidence  of  authority,  unbound  by  any 
implied  contract.  Federalism  is  the  result 
of  definite  agreement.  Each  party  to  the 
agreement  has  allotted  to  it  definite  powers 
and  the  legal  right,  defensible  in  the  law 
courts,  to  retain  these  powers  unimpaired. 
A  federal  system  is  a  work  of  art,  created 
and  completed  in  the  consciousness  of  its 
significance. 

The  framers  of  the  American  federation 
had  one  happy  circumstance  which  made 
their  task  easier.  All  of  them  had  had  a 
considerable  training  in  self-government,  all 
had  the  same  British  tradition  in  political 
thought,  and  all  spoke  the  same  language. 
They  could  readily  understand  each  other. 
Institutions  do  not  work  themselves.  Those 
which  conform  to  the  highest  ideals  and  are 
in  theory  perfect  will  work  only  if  in  the 
hands  of  men  with  instincts  and  training  in 


AND  CANADA  73 

harmony  with  the  purpose  of  the  system  cre- 
ated. Radicals  of  to-day  are  apt  to  complain 
that  the  American  system  was  created  by 
men  who  had  an  exaggerated  respect  for  the 
rights  of  property.  It  may  be  so;  but  this, 
at  least,  should  be  remembered,  that,  in  spite 
of  acute  and  even  angry  differences,  they 
set  up  a  new  system  which  everyone  was 
obliged  to  respect  and  to  obey.  It  had  fierce 
critics,  but  the  critics  were  themselves  trained 
in  political  action.  For  three-quarters  of  a 
century  it  endured  with  no  severe  shock  to 
its  stability.  It  may  be  said  with  truth  that 
it  is  the  only  new  system  imposed  in  an  era 
of  revolution,  with  no  sword  drawn  in  civil 
strife  in  protest  against  its  creation.  Later 
the  sword  was  drawn,  and  then  not  because 
the  system  was  inherently  unfair  but  because 
a  great  human  problem,  that  of  slavery,  had 
reached  the  point  when  it  had  to  be  settled 
forever.  It  was  elemental  injustice  in  an 
earlier  age  to  the  black  man  which  threatened 
the  ruin  of  the  work  done  by  the  founders 
of  the  republic.  Never  did  Nemesis  work 
with  more  tragic  effect. 

The  seeds  of  federalism,  which  had  grown 


74        THE  UNITED  STATES 

to  so  stable  a  result  by  the  end  of  the  eight- 
eenth centm-y,  were  destined  to  scatter  far. 
The  process  proved  slow.  Soon  after  the 
young  republic  was  created  it  was  put  in 
countenance  by  the  appearance  of  the  sister 
French  republic.  The  cry  of  this  repubhc 
was  not  for  federahsm.  France  had  long 
consisted  of  more  than  a  score  of  provinces 
so  little  united  in  spirit  that  they  even  raised 
tariffs  against  each  other.  Now  the  demand 
was  for  "France  one  and  indivisible."  The 
Girondin  party  spoke  vaguely  of  some  kind 
of  federal  union,  but  this  only  served  to  em- 
bitter their  terrible  Jacobin  enemies,  who 
gloried  in  the  supremacy  of  Paris  over  an 
indivisible  France ;  and  the  Girondin  leaders 
paid  on  the  scaffold  the  dread  penalty  of 
their  proposals  for  a  federal  system.  Yet 
was  federalism  in  the  air.  In  due  course 
Napoleon,  the  mihtary  despot,  came  to  the 
final  ruin  which  was  really  involved  in  his 
assaults  on  liberty,  and  then  a  new  Europe 
was  to  be  stabilized.  It  was  the  idea  of  fed- 
erahsm which  for  the  time  solved  the  age- 
long problem  of  union  and  cooperation  of 
the  German  states,  to  the  extent,  at  least,  of 


AND  CANADA  75 

keeping  them  from  making  war  on  each 
other.  The  Germanic  Confederation  of  1815 
was  loose  and  unreal  enough  and  its  shad- 
owy character  has  excited  derision  among 
critics.  But  it  is  well  to  remember  that  it 
served  its  useful  purpose  of  keeping  the 
peace  among  the  German  peoples,  and,  for 
half  a  century,  whatever  their  conflicts  with 
other  races,  they  did  not  draw  the  sword 
against  each  other.  When  they  did,  the  first 
act  of  Prussia,  triumphant  over  Austria,  was 
to  create  a  new  and  this  time  a  real  and 
potent  federation  of  North  Germany  which 
a  few  years  later  became  that  gigantic  and 
powerful  union  known  to  the  world  as  the 
German  Empire. 

The  federalism  of  Germany  was  unlike  the 
federalism  of  the  United  States  chiefly,  per- 
haps, in  that  it  consisted  of  a  number  of  les- 
ser states  grouped  round  one  great  state 
more  powerful  than  all  the  others  combined. 
In  such  conditions  it  is  not  easy  to  provide 
for  the  equality  of  standing  of  the  separate 
units  in  the  great  whole.  This  did  not  exist 
in  Germany,  in  sharp  contrast  with  what  we 
find  in  the  United  States,  where  Nevada,  with 


76         THE  UNITED  STATES 

less  than  a  hundred  thousand  people,  is  the 
equal  in  the  American  Senate,  which  has  be- 
come the  more  powerful  of  the  two  Houses 
of  Congress,  to  New  York  with,  perhaps, 
tep--  million  people.  Federal  institutions, 
ywhich  are  necessarily  based  on  written  law, 
/  depend  upon  the  will  of  each  of  the  parties 
I  to  accept  and  carry  out  the  terms  of  a  con- 
stract.  We  know  to-day  that  while  the  state 
constitutions  in  the  United  States  have  in 
many  cases  undergone  radical  revision  and 
far-reaching  change,  that  of  the  United 
States  has  had  but  nineteen  amendments  in 
more  than  a  century  and  a  quarter.  The 
states  have  been  loyal  to  the  terms  of  their 
contract.  A  dominant  military  power,  how- 
ever, like  that  of  Prussia,  was  certain  in  a 
federal  union  to  use  the  coercive  influence  of 
its  own  authority  and  thus  to  taint  the 
sources  of  federalism.  It  was  not  in  the  soil 
)f  an  armed  Europe  nor  in  that  of  the  miU- 
tarist  South  American  states  that  the  seed 
of  federahsm  took  the  deepest  root,  but  in 
the  British  Commonwealth.  It  became  the 
pupil  of  the  United  States,  and  has  brought 
forth  fruit  of  which  its  teacher  need  not  be 


AND  CANADA  77 

ashamed.     And  the  first  pupil  to  take  the 
lesson  to  heart  was  Canada. 

During  the  nineteenth  century  had  grown 
up  on  the  northern  borders  of  the  United 
States  six  British  colonies,  each  of  them  with 
its  own  marked  characteristics.  Nova  Sco- 
tia was  proud  to  have  been  a  British  land 
long  before  Canada  became  British.  In 
Nova  Scotia  had  floated  the  British  flag  ever 
since,  in  1710,  a  raid  from  New  England 
across  the  Bay  of  Fundy  had  been  success- 
ful, and  what  had  been  the  French  fort  of 
Port  Royal  had  become  the  British  fort  of 
Annapolis,  named  in  honor  of  the  dull  and 
obstinate  but  good  queen  who  then  reigned. 
At  the  time  of  the  American  Revolution  a 
new  colony,  New  Brunswick,  had  been 
carved  out  of  Acadia,  of  which  Nova  Scotia 
was  a  part,  and  which  had  been  ceded  by 
France  under  the  Peace  of  Utrecht  in  1713. 
Hither  and  to  Nova  Scotia  had  come  some 
of  the  best  blood  of  New  England  to  live  un- 
der the  British  flag.  Newfoundland  and 
Prince  Edward  Island,  though  alike  in  that 
each  lay  apart  from  the  mainland,  across  a 
strip  of  sea,  were  wholly  different  in  type. 


78        THE  UNITED  STATES 

Newfoundland  was  a  colony  chiefly  of  fish- 
ermen. Prince  Edward  Island  a  colony 
chiefly  of  farmers.  Their  population  was 
small,  but  each  of  the  colonies  had  its  legisla- 
ture, its  civic  pride,  and  its  obstinate  sense 
of  independence.  Farther  north  and  stretch- 
ing along  the  majestic  Saint  Lawrence  west- 
ward far  beyond  the  boundary  of  the  last  of 
the  Great  Lakes  was  Canada.  The  two  divi- 
sions created  in  1791  had  in  1841  been 
brought  together  into  an  uneasy  and  un- 
happy union.  They  were  in  type  almost 
wholly  separate.  One  was  prevaihngly 
French  and  Catholic,  the  other  prevailingly 
English  and  Protestant,  composed,  indeed, 
largely  of  Loyalist  elements  from  the  United 
/States.  Here  was  the  raw  material  for  a 
new  federation,  material,  indeed,  more  in- 
tractable than  that  of  the  thirteen  colonies. 
It  had  happily  no  negro  problem,  but  it  had 
the  difficulty  which  lurks  in  the  background 
of  all  Canadian  questions — the  French  and 
Catholic  standing  over  against  the  English 
and  Protestant,  and  each  of  them  powerful 
enough  at  times  to  check  and  thwart  the 
other.    By  a  strange  fortune  branches  of  the 


AND  CANADA  79 

two  most  civilized  peoples  of  Europe,  age- 
long enemies,  had  come  to  live  together  in  the 
same  state  in  North  America. 

Whatever  their  differences  these  people 
were  alike  in  one  respect :  all  were  devoted  to 
the  traditions  of  monarchy.  There  were 
none  who  talked  of  setting  up  a  repubhc. 
The  monarchy  of  Queen  Victoria  was  not 
the  monarchy  of  George  III.  Even  George 
III  had  been  forced  to  obey  ministers  who 
had  behind  them  a  majority  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  But  with  the  obstinacy,  which  he 
called  firmness,  he  fretted,  protested,  and 
threatened,  he  intrigued  to  keep  together  a 
body  of  "The  King's  Friends"  who  would 
obey  his  will;  and  always  his  private  virtues 
and  his  unbalanced  and,  in  truth,  insane 
temper  were  factors  to  be  reckoned  with  by 
his  ministers.  It  is  probably  true  that  the 
sex  of  Victoria  led  to  the  complete  abandon- 
ment by  the  crown  of  any  claim  to  direct 
British  pohcy.  Man  is  a  masterful  animal 
and  does  not  hke  direction,  in  public  affairs 
at  least,  by  the  female  of  the  species.  Un- 
der a  queen  the  British  people  ruled  them- 
selves through  a  Cabinet  of  their  own  mak- 


80        THE  UNITED  STATES 

ing.  By  1850,  except  in  respect  to  foreign 
affairs,  the  Canadians  did  the  same.  There 
was  no  longer  any  ground  of  friction  between 
the  two  peoples.  They  were  happy  in  com- 
mon traditions.  Probably  Canada  was  the 
more  vigorous  in  its  expressions  of  devotion 
to  the  crown.  It  had,  too,  confidence  in  Brit- 
ish statesmen.  Pitt  had  broken  the  degrad- 
ing prevalence  of  corruption  in  British  poH- 
tics.  The  buying  and  selling  of  seats  in 
Parliament  had  ended.  No  doubt  voters 
were  still  bought,  but  it  was  by  indirect  and 
not  grossly  direct  methods.  To  the  world,  to 
Canada  at  least,  by  1860,  Britain  stood  as  a 
marvel  of  political  purity,  inciting  to  rever- 
ence and  imitation. 

Thus  it  was  that,  in  1864,  when  the  six 
British  provinces  sent  delegates  to  Quebec 
to  consider  the  problem  of  political  union, 
they  were  proud  to  put  in  the  forefront  of 
their  ideals  that  they  desired  to  frame  a  con- 
stitution similar  in  principle  to  that  of  the 
United  Kingdom.  On  the  face  of  it  they 
were  doing  nothing  of  the  kind.  They  had 
the  dominant  thought  of  creating  a  federa- 
tion, while  the  United  Kingdom  expressed  in 


AND  CANADA  81 

its  name  the  idea  of  complete  political  union 
under  a  single  legislature.  The  thought  of 
any  other  type  of  union  had  never  seriously 
appealed  to  the  British  mind.  When  in  1707 
England  and  Scotland  had  been  united,  it 
is  debatable  whether  it  would  not  have  been 
wise  to  create  a  federal  state  rather  than  a 
United  Kingdom.  The  day  was  to  come 
for  another  union,  that  with  Ireland,  and 
had  Scotland  preserved  in  1707  a  local  legis- 
lature, controlling,  as  every  American  State 
and  every  Canadian  province  now  controls, 
measures  which  touch  education  and  reh- 
gion,  the  precedent  might  have  proved  val- 
uable. The  Kirk  of  Scotland  would  have 
remained  established  by  authority  of  the  Par- 
liament of  Scotland;  Edinburgh  would  have 
remained  a  real  capital,  a  center  of  political 
power,  and  would  not  have  become  merely 
a  provincial  city.  Above  all,  the  example  of 
Scotland  would  have  been  a  powerful  argu- 
ment for  leaving  to  Ireland  authority  touch- 
ing education  and  religion,  the  lack  of  which 
has  been  a  cause  of  her  dire  unrest.  The 
British,  however,  were  not  federally  minded. 
By  1864  the  Canadians  were;  and  yet  they 


82         THE  UNITED  STATES 

proclaimed  their  desire  to  create  as  nearly 
as  possible  a  copy  of  the  United  Kingdom. 

They  created  a  federation.  But  in  the 
horn-  of  decision  some  of  the  six  colonies  drew 
back.  Newfoundland  preferred,  and  con- 
tinues to  prefer,  her  isolation.  For  a  time 
Prince  Edward  Island  adopted  the  same 
course,  but  after  a  few  years  found  the 
larger  wisdom.  For  the  absence  of  New- 
foundland there  was  the  abounding  com- 
pensation of  including  in  the  Canadian  union 
the  far-spreading  empire  of  the  prairie  coun- 
try west  of  the  Great  Lakes  and  also  the 
mountains  and  valleys,  the  sea-coast  and  the 
islands,  of  British  Columbia,  the  latter  an 
achievement  which  added  softness  of  climate 
to  the  rigor  of  the  eastern  provinces.  Just 
as  the  United  States  secured  quickly  its 
fruitful  western  area  beyond  the  Missis- 
sippi, when  once  stable  federal  government 
had  been  created,  so  did  Canada,  when  real 
political  power  was  intrenched  at  Ottawa, 
reach  out  from  the  Great  Lakes  to  the 
Pacific. 

The  new  Canadian  federalism  showed 
deep-seated  but  not  wholly  obvious  contrasts 


AND  CANADA  83 

with  that  of  the  United  States.    On  the  sur-i 
face,  indeed,  there  was  striking  similarity.^ 


The  provinces  in  Canada  had  powers  less  J 
extensive  than  those  of  the  States  but  simi-  \ 
lar  to  them.     The  House  of  Commons  in 
Canada,  like  the  House  of  Representatives 
in  the  United  States,  expressed  the  prin-     j 
ciple  of  representation  from  each  division  in  / 
proportion  to  its  population,  while  the  Ca-\ 
nadian  hke  the  American  Senate  embodied 
the  idea  of  safeguarding    the    interests    of    / 
smaller  units  by  giving  them  representation/ 
without  regard  to  disparity    of    mmibers,^ 
The  contrasts  were,  however,  real.     In  the\ 
Canadian  federal  constitution  there  was  little 
detail,  little  definition.     Power  was  divided 
between  federal  and  provincial  legislatures, 
organs  of  government  were  created  and,  in  ,, 
large  measure,  that  was  all.    There  were  no 
prohibitions  in  regard  to  confiscating  prop- 
erty, to  establishing  a  state  church,  and  to 
the  many  other  things  forbidden  in  the  con- 
stitution of  the  United  States.  There  was  no 
system  of  checks  and  balances.   Fictions  in 
respect  to  the  authority  of  the  sovereign  were 
maintained.    The  queen  was,  in  word,  sup 


^ 


/ 


84        THE  UNITED  STATES 

/posed  to  govern,  and  an  untutored  reader  of 
(the  constitution  might  imagine  that  Canada 
Vas  still  subject  to  the  direct  exercise  of  the 
/royal  authoritj-.  There  was  no  mention  of 
prime  minister  or  cabinet  and  yet  prime  min- 
ister and  cabinet  were  the  pivots  of  the  whole 
■system.  The  official  head  of  the  state  was 
without  authority;  yet  in  the  sovereign  and 
his  representative  centered  the  pomp  and  cir- 
cumstance of  government.  Little  wonder 
that  the  American  people,  living  under  a 
constitution  in  which  powers  are  strictly 
defined  with  an  effort  at  completeness, 
should,  to  this  day,  find  difficulty  in  under- 
standing the  federal  system  of  their  northern 
neighbors.  In  one  system  words  have  their 
due  meaning;  in  the  other  it  is  necessary  al- 
ways to  explain  that  many  of  them  do  not 
mean  what  thej"  seem  to  say.  It  is  the  differ- 
ence between  a  new  creation  and  a  system 
based  on  tradition. 


AND  CANADA  85 


LECTURE  IV 

LIKENESSES    AND     CONTRASTS 

IN  THE  FEDERAL  SYSTEMS 

OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

AND  CANADA 

A  WORLD  grown  old  in  sage  experience 
ought  not  in  practical  affairs  to  think  that 
an  issue  is  solved  by  an  appeal  to  dogma. 
In  theology  creeds  are  as  often  explained 
away  as  accepted  in  their  obvious  meaning; 
and  in  politics,  while  wise  men  shake  their 
heads  at  the  outworn  solution  for  political 
evils  offered  in  the  divine  right  of  kings, 
they  are  hardly  less  restive  at  bald  assertions 
of  the  divine  right  of  democracy.  For  pol- 
itics are  not  to  be  conducted  successful^  by 
the  mere  instinct  of  man  to  govern  himself. 
Societies  there  are,  but  they  are  not  human, 
which  seem  to  arrive  at  an  amazing  degree  of 
organized  efficiency  by  the  exercise  of  in- 
stinct, without  the  need  of  a  laborious  proc- 
ess of  education.  The  bee-hive  has  its  skillful 
architects  who  plan  and  build  shapely  houses, 


86         THE  UNITED  STATES 

its  provision  for  sanitation  and  ventilation, 
its  ordered  solution  of  labor  problems,  its 
police,  its  hierarchy  of  government  officials; 
and  yet  in  this  compact  and  industrious  com- 
munity we  can  find  no  trace  of  school  or  uni- 
versity in  which  the  young  are  taught  how 
best  to  perform  the  tasks  which  fall  to  them. 
Man  is  not  so  happy.  Without  education, 
a  process  lasting  through  many  uncertain 
years,  he  puts  little  beneficent  restraint  upon 
his  fiercer  passions  and  directs  but  ill  his  own 
energies.  It  may  be  that  the  bees  blunder, 
as  man  blunders,  and  are  more  dependent 
upon  experience  than  we  often  imagine,  but 
it  remains  true  that  the  instinct  of  the  bee 
leads  it  to  achieve  its  ends  in  life  by  an  easier 
path  than  that  in  which  man  must  walk.  He 
must  plan  anxiously  for  the  well-being  of  a 
complex  society.  It  is  a  vast  and  intricate 
task  which  no  one  person  can  understand  or 
direct.  Despots  have  tried  it  and  failed  dis- 
astrously. A  single  mind  could  not  read 
deeply  enough  or  see  far  enough.  And  now 
the  many  are  undertaking  to  solve  the  prob- 
lems for  themselves  and  the  road  to  their 
Olympus  is  rough  and  steep. 


AND  CANADA  87 

In  America  democracy  has  its  greatest  op- 
portunity; and  its  success  or  failure  in  the 
American  scene  is  perhaps  of  all  problems 
of  government  the  most  momentous  for  man- 
kind. Here  was  a  continent  dowered  by 
nature  with  riches  widespread  and  abound- 
ing, hardly  touched  by  man.  Here  destiny 
might  write  some  new  story  of  man's  well- 
being.  His  right  to  "life,  liberty,  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness"  does  not  perhaps  cover 
the  whole  of  his  well-being,  for  it  does  not 
express  what  is  the  gravest  and  yet  the  most 
beautiful  thing  in  his  experience,  stern  and 
chastening  discipline  in  a  world  by  him  only 
partly  known  and  mastered.  If  America 
was  itself  a  clean  sheet  of  paper,  ready  for 
man's  scroll,  he  began  there  to  write  his  story 
with  prepossessions  derived  from  a  long  rec- 
ord in  Europe.  Spain  governed  in  America 
with  a  despotic  ruthlessness,  the  results  of 
which  we  see  to-day  in  the  instability  of 
many  of  the  states  which  she  founded.  From 
the  first,  England,  just  because  her  migrat- 
ing sons  were  Englishmen,  was  forced, 
whether  she  liked  it  or  not,  to  leave  them  to 
govern  themselves,  and  thus,  by  a  force  work- 


88        THE  UNITED  STATES 

ing  with  the  resistlessness  of  nature  herself, 
self-governing  communities  grew  up  in 
America.  If  they  were  to  have  good  laws 
and  good  administration,  they  must  secm-e 
them  from  whatever  fountains  of  wisdom 
they  had  within  themselves.  ISTo  one  of  the 
founders  was  or  could  become  so  masterful 
as  to  be  a  despot,  so  that  they  could  not 
prove  whether,  after  all,  in  a  new  world, 
the  vigorous  wisdom  of  one  endowed  with 
power  was  not  better  than  the  slack  wisdom 
of  the  many.  They  had  no  alternative  but 
to  create  democracies. 

Democracy  as  now  we  understand  the 
term  is  in  reality  a  new  thing.  The  Greek 
democracy  was  an  ohgarchy  of  free  men  in 
a  society  based  on  slavery,  with  no  political 
power  or  hberty  for  the  majority,  should  the 
majority  be  slaves.  In  the  democracy  of  to- 
day all  are  free ;  and  power  is  in  the  hands  of 
the  many  without  check  or  limitation.  Good 
government  under  a  democracy  means  good 
laws  and  good  administration  achieved,  if  not 
by  the  wisdom,  at  any  rate  by  the  voluntary 
acquiescence,  of  the  masses  of  the  people. 
In  all  the  tasks  which  man  confronts  there 


AND  CANADA  89 

is  none  more  difficult  than  that  of  so  train- 
ing the  many  minds  in  a  pohtical  community 
that  they  will  both  understand  the  common 
good  and  unite  to  achieve  it.  This  involves 
range  of  vision,  the  capacity  to  see  the  whole, 
the  magnanimity  to  forget  petty  differences 
in  which  man,  a  quarrelsome  animal,  is  be- 
coming always  involved,  and  to  unite  in  the 
altruism  of  securing  the  well-being  of  others. 
Power  to  the  masses  must  in  an  efficient  de- 
mocracy go  hand  in  hand  with  knowledge  of 
how  to  use  it  for  the  best  purposes.  Selfish- 
ness is  apt  always  to  be  clamorous  and  a  self- 
ish minority,  intent  on  using  the  authority 
of  the  state  for  personal  gain,  will  seek  to 
confuse  issues  so  that  the  worse  may  appear 
the  better  reason.  The  few  who  know  their 
minds  will  often  win  at  least  temporary  suc- 
cess. This  tyranny  of  the  minority  is  not 
the  less  menacing  because  it  works  with  the 
cooperation  of  the  wills  of  those  who,  in  the 
end,  will  be  the  losers.  There  is  no  path  to 
well-being  in  human  affairs  other  than  the 
path  along  which  enlightened  wisdom  may 
direct  us,  and  the  wisdom  of  the  many  will 
come  only  with  the  education  of  the  many. 


90         THE  UNITED  STATES 

Wisdom  does  not  dictate  uniformity  of 
method.  No  doubt  from  one  point  to  another 
there  is  always  a  shortest  road,  the  straight 
hne.  But  even  the  planets  in  their  courses 
are  deflected  by  the  attraction  from  a  variety 
of  bodies.  Man  certainly  does  not  take  the 
straight  Hne  to  his  highest  good.  Politics 
are  a  never-ceasing  struggle,  and  the  man  in 
the  stress  of  a  fight  is  thinking  not  of  to- 
morrow but  of  to-day.  One  of  the  most  de- 
structive heresies  of  political  thought  is  the 
view  that  what  proves  useful  in  one  environ- 
ment will  inevitably  prove  useful  in  another. 
There  is  something  pathetic  in  the  name 
"New  England"  v/hich  the  Puritan  colonists 
gave  to  their  creation.  There  could  never 
really  be  a  New  England.  The  real  England 
was  a  land  of  long  traditions,  its  hfe  shaped 
by  its  contact  with  France  and  other  neigh- 
bors, its  hterature  and  its  politics  the  ex- 
pression of  complex  forces.  It  had  the  out- 
look of  a  sea-faring  people  living  on  an 
island,  with  only  a  few  miles  of  open  sea  be- 
tween them  and  continental  Europe.  To  be 
old  was  of  the  essence  of  this  England.  But 
if  England  was  old,  Englishmen  were  young, 


AND  CANADA  91 

and  from  their  loved  homeland  they  carried 
in  themselves  the  germs  of  a  society  which 
feared  God  and  honored  the  king.  None 
the  less  did  they  go  to  a  New  World,  and 
when  the  Old  World  laid  a  repressive  hand 
on  this  new  society  the  explosion  followed 
of  which  echoes  vibrate  to  this  day. 

The  founders  of  the  American  republic 
made  a  constitution,  and  because  its  terms 
are  in  written  clauses,  subject  to  analysis 
under  the  rules  of  grammar  and  of  common 
sense,  we  consider  the  constitution  to  be 
stiffly  starched  and  call  it  by  the  inappropri- 
ate term  inflexible ;  while  to  the  looser  Brit- 
ish system,  based  on  both  law  and  custom  and 
changeable  either  by  statute  or  by  new  prac- 
tice, we  give  the  name  flexible.  The  writ- 
ten constitution  is  not  however  inflexible, 
for  political  forces  cannot  be  fully  expressed 
and  controlled  under  the  phrases  of  a  docu- 
ment. If  a  fence  seems  to  block  the  way 
to  some  needed  action  or  reform,  political 
ingenuity  will  make  its  advance  by  passing 
over,  or  under,  or  through  the  fence,  or  by 
removing  it.  The  framers  of  the  American 
constitution  planned  the  election  of  a  pres- 


92         THE  UNITED  STATES 

ident  by  a  few  men,  chosen  for  the  purpose 
from  each  of  the  states,  but  the  written  con- 
stitution has  been  flexible  enough  to  abohsh 
this  practice  in  all  but  form  and  to  provide 
for  the  choice  of  the  president  by  popular  elec- 
tion. The  written  constitution  intends  that 
the  Senate  of  the  United  States  shall  really 
exercise  oversight  in  all  important  federal 
appointments.  In  fact,  under  what  is  called 
"senatorial  courtesy,"  the  dominant  political 
forces  in  each  state  often,  though  not  always, 
control  federal  patronage  in  all  but  the  most 
important  offices.  There  is  no  inflexibility 
in  respect  to  the  surging  forces  of  democratic 
life. 

A  group  of  Englishmen  of  a  literary  turn 
were  asked  by  one  of  their  number  what 
might  be  regarded  as  the  most  pregnant  of 
current  proverbs.  After  a  pause  one  of  them 
said:  "No  one  knows  where  the  shoe  pinches 
but  the  wearer";  and  the  others  agreed  as 
to  the  condensed  wisdom  of  the  saying.  Each 
person  for  himself  and  each  nation  for  itself 
must  find  the  defects  which  can  be  corrected. 
The  history  of  modern  Ireland  illustrates 
with  the  grimness  of  tragedy  the  deep  mean- 


AND  CANADA  93 

ing  of  the  proverb.  Benevolent  intentions 
from  an  authority  external  is  no  guide  to  the 
finding  of  the  sore  spot.  No  one  but  the 
wearer  knows  where  the  shoe  pinches,  and  in 
a  political  society,  under  democratic  condi- 
tions, the  wearer  must  find  the  remedy. 
Across  the  Atlantic  are  passing  exhortations 
that  each  side  should  imitate  something  in 
the  other.  Federal  America  sees  congestion 
in  the  Parliament  at  London.  It  learns 
with  amazement  that  all  governmental  pow- 
ers, the  school  system  of  Scotland,  the  char- 
tering of  a  petty  railway  in  Ireland — all, 
without  exception,  of  the  problems  in  all 
their  phases  which  require  legislation  of  any 
kind,  are  controlled  for  nearly  fifty  million 
people  from  a  single  center.  The  federal 
man  is  aghast  and  cries:  "Why  do  not  you 
create  a  federation?  Look  at  us!"  And 
across  the  sea  come  voices  which  suggest 
that,  rather,  you  should  look  at  us.  "If  a  for- 
eigner is  murdered  in  Britain  and  his  gov- 
ernment asks  for  an  explanation,  we  do  not," 
says  the  Englishman,  "plead  that  we  have 
no  authority  to  act.  We  control  laws  re- 
specting marriage,  and  do  not  permit  any 


94        THE  UNITED  STATES 

fenced  off  area  to  flout  decency  by  making 
divorce  absurdly  easy.  We  turn  out  a  head 
of  our  government  when  he  has  lost  pubhc 
confidence  and  do  not  keep  up  a  fretful  war 
between  one  high  state  authority  and  an- 
other. Look  at  us !" 

These  comparisons  at  long  range  are  not 
particularly  edifying,  but  perhaps  we  may 
find  nearer  home  suggestive  likenesses  and 
contrasts.  A  monarchy  and  a  republic  are 
close  neighbors  in  North  America,  both 
subtly  alike  and  subtly  different.  When  the 
federation  of  Canada  was  made,  the  prin- 
ciple of  monarchy  was  so  much  in  the  mind 
of  the  Canadian  framers  of  the  new  constitu- 
tion that  they  called  their  creation  "the  King- 
dom of  Canada."  All  unconsciously  to  itself 
the  republic  of  the  United  States  blocked  the 
realization  of  their  plan.  The  time  was  that 
at  the  end  of  the  civil  war.  There  was  irri- 
tation in  the  United  States  against  Great 
Britain,  and  British  ministers  feared  that 
to  parade  a  new  kingdom  in  North  America 
before  the  minds  of  a  republican  people,  who 
for  nearly  a  hundred  years  had  proclaimed 
their    suspicion    and   dislike   of   monarchy, 


V 


AND  CANADA  95 

would  make  worse  problems  already  difficult. 
Canada  in  consequence  took  the  nondescript 
title  of  "Dominion."  It  remained  true,  how- 
ever, that  a  vital  difference  in  the  two  sys- 
tems hinged  on  the  traditions  of  monarchy. 
The  superficial  likeness  between  the  two 
federations  is  so  striking  that  Professor 
Dicey,  an  eminent  authority  on  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  British  Empire,  has  declared  that 
the  fathers  of  the  Canadian  system  who  were 
proud  to  express  their  desire  to  follow  closely 
the  constitution  of  the  "United  Kingdom" 
would  have  been  nearer  the  truth  had  they 
said  the  "United  States."  Though  a  con- 
siderable minority  in  Canada  uses  habitually 
the  French  tongue,  English  is  the  predom- 
inant language  in  both  federations.  With  a 
common  language  the  larger  country  has 
more  influence  on  the  smaller  than  the 
smaller  on  the  larger,  for  the  more  populous 
state  produces  a  greater  variety  of  literature 
pervaded  with  its  own  ideas.  Few  Canadian 
newspapers  circulate  in  the  United  States, 
but  hundreds  of  thousands  of  copies  of 
American  newspapers  are  circulated  weekly 
in  Canada.    The  United  States  and  Canada 


96        THE  UNITED  STATES 

are  alike  in  having  each  a  vast  territory  un- 
der its  control — territory  of  boundless  pos- 
sibilities. It  is  said  of  the  United  States 
that  it  has  the  best  three  milHon  square  miles 
in  the  world,  and  it  may  be  that  when  the 
resources  of  Canada  are  fully  known  she 
can  tell  as  good  a  tale.  Each  federation  has 
-both  large  and  small  political  units,  though 
the  tendency  in  Canada  is  to  divisions  larger 
than  those  of  the  United  States.  There  are 
but  nine  provinces  in  Canada  to  forty-eight 
states  in  the  American  union. 

Federalism  has  proved  the  protection  of 
the  peculiarities  which  grow  up  in  commu- 
nities with  differing  conditions.  Variety  of 
laws  tends  to  protect  variety  of  human  types 
and  to  perpetuate  the  influence  of  local  tra- 
ditions of  character  and  of  soil.  Man  in  the 
forests  of  Maine  will  be  different  from  man 
in  the  mild  climate  and  glaring  sun  and  on 
the  browned  lands  of  California,  lying  be- 
tween the  mountains  and  the  sea.  If  Maine 
and  Cahfornia  were  wholly  governed  from 
Washington,  there  would  be,  at  any  rate, 
identity  of  the  laws  under  which  society  is 
regulated.    But  federalism  permits  of  vari- 


AND  CANADA  97 

ety  in  respect  to  such  things  as  education, 
rehgion,  the  rights  of  property,  and  the  rule 
of  municipahties,  controlled  under  state  law. 
There  was  a  time  when  some  of  the  states 
of  the  Union  had  an  established  church  and, 
if  they  chose,  this  they  might  still  have.  In 
Canada  there  is  an  even  more  striking  vari- 
ety. France  was  the  creator  of  Canada  and 
laid  deep  the  foundations  of  her  own  social 
system.  The  French  in  Canada,  extremely 
tenacious  of  the  culture  of  their  parent  na- 
tion, which  they  regard  as  the  most  advanced 
in  the  world,  have  succeeded  in  keeping  the 
province  of  Quebec  prevailingly  French  in 
character.  In  its  legislature  usually  the 
French  and  not  the  English  language  is 
heard.  The  Roman  Catholic  Church  retains 
the  privileges  which  it  had  when  France  was 
still  the  devoted  daughter  of  that  church, 
and  it  can  still  collect  by  process  of  law  its 
tithes  and  the  levies  for  chm'ch  buildings 
made  on  its  members.  In  state-supported 
schools  the  tenets  of  the  church  are  taught. 
The  system  of  law  is  French  in  type,  based 
on  the  Code  Napoleon.  Federahsm  thus 
lends  itself  to  variety,  a  virtue  or  a  de- 


> 


98        THE  UNITED  STATES 

feet  aecording  to  the  point  of  view  of  the  ob- 
server. 

The  two  federations,  lying  side  by  side, 
are  perhaps  the  most  completely  democratic 
of  any  of  the  larger  states  in  the  world.  Ed- 
ucation is  widespread.  Newspapers  are 
read  by  all  classes  of  citizens  and  carry  their 
influence  on  the  mind,  whether  it  is  for  good 
or  evil.  Conditions  in  these  two  great  unions 
tend  undoubtedly  to  foster  the  individual's 
sense  of  his  own  importance.  John  Stuart 
Mill,  a  judge  of  democracy  not  too  partial, 
said  long  ago  that  "every  American  is  both 
a  patriot  and  a  man  of  cultivated  intelli- 
gence." If  this  was  a  correct  statement  in 
Mill's  time,  we  must  admit  that  no  longer 
is  it  such,  but  any  measure  of  truth  in  it 
apphes  to  the  sister  democracy,  and  in  days 
of  murmui'ing  that  democracy  both  does  too 
much  and  leaves  too  much  undone  we  may 
find  comfort  in  the  sense  of  dignity  which 
the  reality  of  power  gives  to  manhood.  It 
is  something  for  the  world  that  two  great 
federations  are  working  out  their  destiny  by 
the  aid  of  the  wisdom  not  merely  of  the  few 
but  of  the  many. 


AND  CANADA  99 

Sharp  contrasts  there  are  between  these 
systems.  Canada  presents  this  difference 
from  the  United  States,  that  it  was  not  so 
fortunate  as  to  include  all  the  territory  in 
North  America  which  might  seem  naturally 
to  belong  to  it.  Islands  are  proverbially 
jealous  of  their  independence  and  the  great 
island  of  Newfoundland  lying  across  the  en- 
trance to  the  Gulf  and  River  of  Saint  Law- 
rence has  never  entered  the  Canadian  fed- 
eration. The  United  States,  so  happy  in  the 
entrance  by  consent  of  all  the  original  col- 
onies, has  had  its  own  peculiar  problems  in 
respect  to  union,  for  the  time  came  when 
states  which  had  entered  the  union  freely 
claimed  the  right  freely  to  withdraw.  The 
result  was  civil  war  on  a  scale  to  stagger 
mankind.  Canada,  on  the  other ^and,  has 
had  no  serious  movement  for  breaking  up 
the  union.  Mutter ings  there  were  for  a  few 
years  after  federation  was  achieved  and  be- 
fore its  qualities  were  tested,  but  they 
quickly  died  away.  Even  in  Quebec,  which 
is  a  nation  within  a  nation  in  Canada,  al- 
most no  voices  are  ever  heard  in  support  of 
breaking  away. 


100      THE  UNITED  STATES 

The  contrasts  in  spirit  of  the  United 
States  and  Canada  go  very  deep.  The 
American  federation  was  created  in  idealism, 
in  the  hope,  as  we  have  seen,  that  here  was 
inaugurated  a  great  human  movement.  Its 
creators  beheved  themselves  called  "to  vindi- 
cate the  honor  of  the  human  race"  in  a  scene 
where  their  labors  should  be  remote  from 
"the  pernicious  labyrinths  of  European  pol- 
itics." Devotion  to  an  ideal  libertj'-  became 
a  striking  characteristic  of  the  soldier  who 
fought  against  the  British,  and  sometimes 
he  wore  on  his  hat  or  on  the  sleeve  of  his 
coat  a  band  with  the  words,  "Liberty  or 
Death."  On  every  recurring  Fourth  of 
July,  the  anniversary  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  and  a  public  hohday  forever, 
the  assertions  of  ideahsm  were  renewed. 
A  great  nation  gave  itself  once  a  year  to  the 
•contemplation  of  the  principles  for  which  the 
republic  stands.  The  Fourth  of  July  ora- 
tion, often  flamboyant  in  style,  often  colored 
by  denunciation  of  the  tyranny  of  monar- 
chical Britain  and  overwrought  passion  for 
liberty  or  dissolution,  was  none  the  less  a  re- 
call to  idealism,  and  tended  to  perpetuate 


AND  CANADA  101 

that  desire  to  remain  remote  from  entangle- 
ments in  other  continents  which  is  still  a  potent 
factor  in  the  politics  of  the  United  States. 
And  at  the  same  time,  along  thousands  of 
miles  of  the  northern  frontier  of  the  United 
States,  a  people  was  growing  into  full  na- 
tional life  who  smiled,  possibly  with  a  supe- 
rior air,  when  the  echoes  of  American  ideal- 
ism reached  their  ears.  They  had  no  Fourth 
of  July  celebration,  no  annual  commemora- 
tion of  the  right  to  "life,  hberty,  and  the  pur- 
suit of  happiness."  Their  most  enjoyed  an- 
nual holiday  came  on  a  fresh  day  in  May 
when  they  celebrated  the  birthday  of  their 
sovereign,  the  descendant  of  George  III> 
whom  the  Declaration  of  Independence  de- 
nounces in  terms  so  virile.  These  people 
hardly  ever  talked  of  liberty,  and  the  alter- 
native of  "hberty  or  death"  never  occurred 
to  their  imagination.  The  United  States^N 
was  created  in  idealism.  Canada  grew  out  \ 
of  tradition. .  If  the  causes  are  different,  the  i 
chief  result  is  similar.  Each  of  the  two  fed-  / 
erations  is  free. 

The  two  systems  are,  however,  unhke  in 
their  mode  of  working.    Where  custom,  a 


102       THE  UNITED  STATES 

careful  regard  for  practice  and  precedent, 
is  the  law  of  life,  there  is  likely  to  be  hesi- 
tancy in  asserting  general  principles.  In  an 
old  society  the  consciousness  grows  up  that 
the  present  is  only  a  part  and,  it  may  be,  a 
small  part,  of  the  record.  The  result  is  a 
frame  of  mind  which  we  call  conservative, 
though  a  better  term  would  perhaps  be  ex- 
perimental, a  chariness  about  dogma,  about 
prophesying  in  respect  to  the  future,  about 
anything  but  the  study  and  understanding  of 
the  things  that  are.  Mr.  Galsworthy  gives 
an  amusing  illustration  of  this  point  of  view. 
During  the  war  an  expansive  American  com- 
rade-in-arms says  to  an  Englishman:  "So 
you  and  I  are  going  to  clean  up  brother 
Boche  together!"  And  the  Englishman's 
answer  is  only  "Really!"  He  will  not  com- 
mit himself  to  any  enthusiastic  program  set- 
ting forth  what  he  is  going  to  do.  In  his  long 
past  he  knows  that  many  a  program  has 
failed.  He  will  stick  to  his  job  for  to-day 
and  not  say  much  about  what  may  happen 
to-morrow.  This  living  in  the  present  may 
seem  to  indicate  that  he  has  no  power  of 
intellectual  analysis  and,  in  truth,  in  this  he 


AND  CANADA  103 

does  not  excel.    His  merit  is  that  he  keeps  his 
feet  on  the  soHd  ground. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  contrasts  in  actual 
working  of  the  two  federal  systems,  one 
based  upon  idealism  expressed  in  the  clauses 
of  a  written  document,  the  other  on  an  Act 
of  Parliament  which  is  a  mere  outhne  defin- 
ing powers  and  creating  organs  but  depend- 
ent for  its  working  upon  unwritten  tradition. 
We  all  know  the  chief  features  of  the  federal 
system  of  the  United  States,  one  of  the  most 
important  political  creations  which  the  world 
has  ever  seen.  The  head  of  the  state  is 
chosen  in  every  fourth  year  and  has  control 
of  the  executive  government.  He  has,  how- 
ever, no  control  over  the  legislative  body. 
Congress,  which  makes  laws  and  votes  mon- 
eys, does  not  direct  the  administration  of  the 
law  or  the  actual  spending  of  money  voted. 
Like  the  President,  Congress  is  strictly  lim- 
ited in  the  exercise  of  power,  and  a  great  tri- 
bunal, the  Supreme  Court,  interprets  with 
authority  the  rights  of  both  under  the  consti- 
tution, which  is  the  supreme  law  of  the  land. 
Except  for  "treason,  bribery,  or  other  high 
crimes,"  the  President  cannot  be  removed 


^   104       THE  UNITED  STATES 

from  the  office  which  he  holds  for  four  years 
— no  President  has  ever  resigned — and  Con- 
gress cannot  be  dissolved  except  by  the  ex- 
pirj''  of  the  period  of  time  for  which  its  mem- 
bers have  been  elected.  The  executive  and 
the  legislative  power  may  continue  for  years 
in  acute  conflict,  and  yet  one  authority  has 
to  administer  the  laws  and  to  spend  the 
monej'-  voted  by  the  other.  What  the  Cana- 
dians call  Responsible  Government  (a  bet- 
ter term  is  Parliamentary  Government)  does 
not  exist — that  is  to  say,  government  in 
which  the  elected  legislature  controls  and 
can  change  completely  the  personnel  of  the 
executive  power.  In  the  legislature  power 
is  divided  between  two  chambers,  each  of 
them  an  elective  body,  but  with  greater  au- 
thority, as  time  passed,  in  the  second  cham- 
ber, the  Senate,  since  it  has  special  powers 
in  respect  to  treaties  with  other  nations  and 
to  appointments  to  office.  The  central  gov- 
ernment has  confided  to  it  only  a  limited 
range  of  responsibility,  since  the  states  have 
charge  of  all  matters  not  specifically  dele- 
gated to  the  federal  authority,  and  these 
cover  the  important  subjects  of  municipal 


AND  CANADA  105 

government,  public  order,  and  education, 
and  extend  to  the  solemn  power  to  impose 
and  carry  out  the  sentence  of  death.  Federal 
courts  determine  suits  between  citizens  of 
different  states,  but  in  the  main  federal  courts 
administer  federal  law,  state  courts  admin- 
ister state  law;  and  the  two  sets  of  tribunals 
are  quite  distinct  in  functions. 

Such  in  meager  and  inadequate  outhne 
are  some  features  of  the  federal  system  of 
the  United  States.  It  is  pervaded  by  pro- 
visions for  checks  and  balances  derived  from 
two  types  of  motive,  one  to  safeguard  the. 
rights  of  the  individual  states  which,  claim-; 
ing  to  be  free  and  sovereign  powers,  agreed 
to  a  limited  union  and  desired  protection 
from  possible  encroachment  by  the  central 
authority;  the  other  to  make  impossible  the 
growth  in  the  state  of  tyranny  on  the  part 
of  a  person  or  body  intrusted  with  power. 
The  contrasts,  in  words  at  least,  to  be  found 
in  the  Canadian  federation  are  almost  ludi- 
crous. Here,  side  by  side  with  the  carefully 
guarded  system  of  the  United  States,  is  a 
political  union  based  upon  the  conceptions  of , 
hereditary  monarchy.    In  words  at  least  the 


106       THE  UNITED  STATES 

sovereign  makes  the  laws  and  carries  on  the 
executive  government.  An  American  sen- 
ator, whose  insight  would  not  be  praised  by 
the  wiser  of  his  countrymen,  declared  re- 
cently that  Canadians  could  not  be  a  free 
people,  since  the  instrument  under  which 
they  were  governed  was  enacted  not  by  the 
Canadian  people  but  in  so  many  words  "by 
the  Queen's  most  excellent  majesty."  He 
quoted  further  the  horrifying  statement, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  freedom,  that  "the 
executive  government  and  authority  of  and 
over  Canada  is  hereby  declared  to  ...  be 
vested  in  the  Queen."  Canadians  make  sol- 
emn oath  to  "be  faithful  and  bear  true  alle- 
giance" to  the  sovereign,  and  freely  admit 
themselves  to  be  "subjects"  of  this  ruler. 
Little  wonder  that  when  one  of  these  clauses, 
indicating  the  slavery  of  a  whole  people,  was 
read  aloud,  a  senator,  startled  that  such  a 
thing  could  be,  cried  out  in  apparent  dismay, 
"Read  that  again!"'  Clearly,  there  was  no 
thought  of  checks  and  balances  in  an  instru- 
ment expressed  in  such  terms. 

Things  in  Canada  are  not  really  as  bad  as 

» Debate  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  March  8,1920. 


AND  CANADA  107    v^ 

they  seem,  though  it  must  be  admitted  that  a 
nation  accustomed  to  a  constitution  in  which 
words  are  taken  in  their  simple  and  obvious 
meaning  is  to  be  pardoned  for  some  misun- 
derstanding of  a  constitution  of  parts  of 
which  the  opposite  is  ahnost  true — that  words 
are  not  to  be  taken  in  their  obvious  meaning. 
It  is  a  simple  fact  that  the  constitution  of 
Canada  is  the  creation  of  the  Canadian  peo- 
ple, and  that  in  shaping  it  the  sovereign  had 
no  voice  whatever;  that  the  executive  gov- 
ernment of  Canada  is  in  the  hands  of  per- 
sons chosen  by  the  people  of  Canada,  and 
that  neither  the  king  nor  the  king's  represen- 
tative has  in  it  any  real  share;  and  that  a 
"subject"  in  Canada  is  just  a  citizen,  subject 
no  more  and  no  less  to  the  laws  of  the  land 
than  is  a  citizen  of  the  United  States.  In  a 
legal  system  based  on  tradition  and  itself 
the  product  of  a  long  succession  of  slow 
changes,  old  forms  are  retained,  while  into 
them  is  read  a  new  meaning.  Usually  there 
is  never  a  decisive  moment  when  the  old 
phrases  have  wholly  ceased  to  be  valid  in 
their  obvious  sense  and  new  phrases  could 
be  employed.    There  is  no  precise  time  when 


108      THE  UNITED  STATES 

a  man  becomes  middle-aged  or  old.  The 
young  boy  and  the  old  man  are  still  called 
by  the  same  name  of  John  Doe,  though  the 
significance  of  the  reahty  behind  the  name 
changes  almost  from  hour  to  hour.  So  is  it 
with  a  constitution  which  once  was  young  but 
now  is  old.  The  phrases  remain;  it  is  their 
meaning  which  changes. 

To  the  uninitiated  reader  there  are  max- 
ims in  British  constitutional  custom  which 
seem  to  involve  either  irreverent  jesting  or 
statements  that  belong  to  an  age  when  the 
king  was  beHeved  to  be  really  half  divine. 
There  was  a  time,  in  France,  at  any  rate, 
when  the  statement  that  the  highest  law  was 
the  will  of  the  king  ( voluntas  regis,  suprema 
leoc)  had  a  direct  application  to  government; 
what  the  king  willed  was  in  truth  law  and 
was  carried  out  as  such.  Out  of  the  Re- 
naissance period,  with  its  bitter  struggles 
over  religion,  came  the  maxim  applied  in 
Germany,  ''Cujus  regio,  ejus  religio"\  the 
religious  status  of  a  country  was  determined 
by_the  personal  faith  of  its  ruler.  These  max- 
ims represent  doctrines  applied  to  society  in 
their  literal  meaning.    But  what  are  we  to 


AND  CANADA  109 

say  of  British  maxims,  not  the  sm*vival  of  a 
long  past,  but  themselves  modern,  that  "The 
king  never  dies"  and  that  "The  king  can  do 
no  wrong"?  The  first  gives  a  fictitious  im- 
mortality to  the  sovereign,  for  it  only  means 
that  when  one  king  dies  his  successor  at  that 
moment  begins  to  reign,  so  that  always  there 
is  a  king.  Everyone  knows  too  that  when  we 
say,  "The  king  can  do  no  wrong"  we  do  not 
mean  what  we  seem  to  say,  that  all  which 
the  king  does  is  right.  The  real  meaning  is 
that,  if  wrong  is  done — as  often  it  is — not 
the  king,  but  the  minister  who  advised  ac- 
tion, in  the  king's  name,  is  to  be  held  respon- 
sible. Thus  a  statement  seemingly  extrava- 
gant in  the  attribute  it  imputes  to  the  king 
is  in  reality  a  rather  extreme  statement  of 
democratic  theory,  asserting  not  only  that 
the  king  can  do  nothing  of  himself,  but  also 
that  whoever  acts  for  him  must  not  look  to 
the  king  to  shield  him  but  is  to  be  held  re- 
sponsible for  anj^  evil  thing  in  his  conduct. 
There  is  another  maxim  of  British  con- 
stitutional theory  which  bears  on  its  face 
almost  the  mark  of  blasphemy:  "Parliament 
is  omnipotent."    We  know  that  omnipotence 


■y^-- 


110       THE  UNITED  STATES 

does  not  belong  to  man,  and  yet  this  is 
claimed  for  a  body  of  men  chosen  in  the  hap- 
hazard of  a  modern  election.  What  does  it 
all  mean?  Only  that  Parliament  has  the 
right  to  overrule  every  other  authority.  This 
is  far  from  omnipotence,  it  is  in  reality  only 
omni-competence,  yet  the  maxim  does  call 
up  a  vivid  phase  of  the  British  system. 
No  court  restrains  Parhament  in  the  exer- 
cise of  plenary  authority.  In  the  United 
States  Congress  has  no  control  of  the  execu- 
tive power,  and  if  it  tries  to  encroach  upon 
the  functions  of  the  President,  there  sits  the 
Supreme  Court  in  solemn  gravity  watching 
to  protect  the  President  in  the  exercise  of 
his  powers  as  it  will  protect  Congress  against 
the  President  in  the  exercise  of  its  powers. 
No  organ  of  government  in  the  United 
States  has  power  both  to  make  laws  and  to 
name  the  officers  to  enforce  them.  This  Par- 
hament does,  when  it  makes  and  unmakes  the 
executive  government.  The  king  can  do  no 
wrong,  but  Parliament  can  do  what  it  likes, 
right  or  wrong,  and  there  is  no  court  to  stop 
it,  and  no  person,  not  even  the  king,  constitu- 
tionally so  immaculate ;  for,  during  two  hun- 


AND  CANADA  111    ^ 

dred  years,  he  has  exercised  no  right  of  veto, 
and  now  by  the  authority  of  custom  he  no 
longer  possesses  the  power  to  veto  a  measure 
enacted  by  Parhament. 

These  contrasts  in  form  between  the  con- 
stitutional methods  of  the  American  and  the 
British  systems  seem  on  the  surface  so  strik- 
ing as  to  be  perverse.  Yet  is  there  a  real 
) likeness.  If  the  king  never  dies,  it  may  also 
be  said  with  truth  that  the  President  of  the 
United  States  never  dies,  since  from  the  mo- 
nient  that  one  President  retires  his  successor 
must  be  assimied  to  exercise  authority.  Thus 
a  repubHc,  no  less  than  a  monarchy,  has  a 
permanent  official  head.  There  is  too  in  the 
American  system — if  the  phrase  may  be  par- 
doned— all  the  omnipotence  which  man  can 
exercise.  In  British  states  full  power  is  tL 
given  to  the  legislators  who  are  chosen  to 
represent  the  people ;  in  the  United  States  it 
is,  under  the  supreme  law  of  the  constitution, 
retained  by  the  people  themselves.  They 
may  make  in  the  constitution  any  amend- 
ments which  they  please.  They  could  pro- 
vide that  the  President  should  have  despotic 
power.    They  could  give  the  House  of  Rep- 


112      THE  UNITED  STATES 

resentatives  a  commanding  authority  like 
that  of  the  House  of  Commons  in  the  Brit- 
ish system,  and  they  could  make  the  Senate 
an  hereditary  body,  so  that  sons  of  senators 
should  step  by  right  into  the  seats  vacated 
by  the  death  of  their  fathers.  The  people  are 
omnipotent  in  the  United  States  as  is  Par- 
liament in  England ;  under  the  reign  of  law, 
appHed  no  less  in  the  United  States  than  in 
the  British  Empire,  if  the  state,  like  the 
king,  can  do  no  wrong,  its  servants  do  wrong 
and  are  held  responsible  before  the  law  for 
their  actions. 

In  the  two  systems  it  is  not  ultimate  prin- 
ciples but  methods  of  working  which  are 
different,  and  here  again  the  contrasts  are 
vivid.  I  am  myself  convinced  that  the  deep- 
est and  most  important  difference  is  in  a 
mode  of  political  action  which,  found  in  germ 
in  Britain  at  the  period  of  the  American  Rev- 
olution, has  matured  since  then  into  a  clearly 
defined  system,  known  as  Responsible  or 
Parliamentary  Government.  It  was  not 
effective  in  the  time  of  George  III.  Dur- 
ing the  war  with  the  American  colonies  there 
came  a  time,  in  1778,  when  public  opinion 


AND  CANADA  113 

in  England  was  overwhelmingly  in  favor  of 
far-reaching  conciliation  which  would  cer- 
tainly give  the  colonies  their  freedom  and 
might  at  the  same  time  preserve  the  unity  of 
the  British  Empire.  The  man  whom  the  na- 
tion desired  to  take  office  and  effect  recon- 
ciliation was  the  Earl  of  Chatham.  At  the 
present  time  the  sovereign  could  not  resist 
such  a  demand.  But  George  III  resisted  it. 
In  opposition  Chatham  had  attacked  the  pol- 
icy which  the  king  chose  to  consider  not  that 
of  his  ministers  but  of  himself.  He  hated 
Chatham  with  a  bitter  and  sullen  hatred,  and 
now  he  declared  that  he  would  not  have 
Chatham  as  his  chief  adviser;  rather  than 
submit  to  this  slavery  he  would  resign  the 
crown.  The  king  was  able,  by  his  control  of 
a  Parliament  not  responsive  to  public  opin- 
ion, to  keep  Chatham  from  office,  and  the 
result  was  that  the  American  war  went  on 
to  the  bitter  end.  Twenty-five  years  later 
George  III  did  the  same  thing  and  refused 
the  request  of  William  Pitt,  Chatham's  son, 
that  Fox,  a  leader  of  the  opposition,  should 
be  given  office.  Though  already  Parliament 
made  and  unmade  ministers,  the  king  could 


114       THE  UNITED  STATES 

still  keep  from  office  a  man  desired  by  the 
nation.  It  is  not  so  now.  The  king  cannot 
resist  the  demand  of  public  opinion,  and 
within  twenty-four  hours  both  the  governing 
personnel  and  the  policy  of  the  state  can  be 
wholly  altered.  To  test  pubHc  opinion  a 
general  election  may  take  place  at  any  time, 
and  in  both  Great  Britain  and  Canada  two 
actually  have  occurred  within  little  more  than 
a  year.  No  British  government  is  safe 
for  an  hour  if  it  has  lost  the  support  of  pub- 
lic opinion.  It  may,  of  course,  cHng  to  office, 
but  it  has  no  security.  A  breath  of  public 
opinion  may  at  any  moment  blow  out  the 
flickering  light  of  a  discredited  ministry.  If 
pubhc  opinion  is  fickle,  this  power  may  in- 
volve danger.  In  fact,  governments  last  in 
England  about  as  long  as  they  do  in  the 
United  States. 

This  is  Parliamentary  Government,  and 
time  has  shown  it  to  be  the  most  striking 
characteristic  of  the  modern  British  system. 
France,  having  tried  nearly  every  other  type 
of  administration,  at  last  resorted  to  Par- 
liamentary Government  under  the  Third  Re- 
public, with  the  result  that,  while  ministries 


AND  CANADA  115 

have  changed  with  dismaying  frequency,  the 
republic  itself  has  endured  for  half  a  cen- 
tury. Italy  has  adopted  it  and,  in  spite  of 
difficulties  almost  overwhelming,  maintained 
stabihty  during  the  Great  War  partly  by 
changing  her  ministers  to  meet  current  de- 
mands of  public  opinion.  Results  may  or 
may  not  vindicate  Parliamentary  Govern- 
ment. That  is  not  the  point  under  discus- 
sion. The  fact  remains  that  on  this  method 
the  two  great  branches  of  the  English-speak- 
ing peoples  are  at  opposite  poles.  Britain 
has  adopted  it,  and  ministries  and  Parlia- 
ments change  from  day  to  day.  The  United 
States  has  not  adopted  it,  and  the  executive 
and  the  legislative  authority  endure  for  fixed 
periods  of  time  and  are  irremovable. 

The  system  of  Parliamentary  Government 
has  had  far-reaching  results  on  British  politi- 
cal methods.  It  has  involved  recognized  per- 
manent leaders  of  political  parties.  Here 
too,  though,  like  the  creation  of  Parliamen- 
tary Government,  the  system  is  sanctioned 
only  by  custom,  and  not  by  law,  is  one  of 
the  vital  differences  between  federalism  in 
the  United  States  and  federalism  in  Canada. 


^ 


116      THE  UNITED  STATES 

In  the  United  States  candidates  for  the  pres- 
idency are  chosen  anew  in  each  fourth  year, 
and  the  person  elected  becomes  the  party 
leader  for  the  succeeding  political  campaign. 
At  short  and  fixed  intervals  the  struggle  for 
political  leadership  is  renewed,  and  the  pro- 
gram, the  so-called  platform,  of  the  party 
is  drawn  up.  The  successful  party  usually, 
but  not  always,  has  a  leader  in  the  President 
during  his  term  of  office,  but  his  authority 
wanes  or  grows  strong  with  the  prospect  of 
his  nomination  for  a  second  term.  All  the 
time  the  chairman  of  the  National  Commit- 
tee of  each  party  is  watching  and  directing 
party  policy.  In  a  sense  each  of  these  per- 
sons leads  his  party,  but  the  kmd  of  leader- 
ship is  different  from  that  of  a  party  leader 
who  will  himself  take  office  and  carry  out 
his  own  policy.  Under  the  British  system 
a  party  always  has  this  type  of  leader.  He 
sits  in  Parliament,  face  to  face  with  the  rival 
leader.  Isolation  or  seclusion  is  impossible. 
He  is  there  to  be  questioned  and  criticised 
from  day  to  day.  The  practice  has  gone  so 
far  in  Canada  that  the  leader  of  the  opposi- . 
tion  party  in  Parliament  is  paid  a  salary. 


AND  CANADA  117 

The  leadership  of  a  single  man  may  long  en- 
dure. Sir  John  Macdonald  led  the  Conserv- 
ative party  in  Canada  for  nearly  forty  years, 
and  Sir  Wilfred  Laurier  led  the  Liberal 
party  continuously  for  the  thirty-two  years 
prior  to  his  death  in  1919.  Each  of  these 
leaders  was  prime  minister  and  the  real  ruler 
of  Canada  for  periods  longer  than  the  as  yet 
unreached  three  terms  of  an  American  Pres- 
ident. There  is  no  doubt  that,  with  perma- 
nent leaders,  changes  in  policy  are  made 
more  gradually  and  with  less  friction  than  is 
found  when  both  a  leader  and  a  policy  have 
to  be  chosen  at  the  same  time.  On  the  other 
hand,  long  tenure  of  a  post  tends  to  make  its 
holder  unreceptive  and  sometimes  despotic. 
In  England  governments  do  not,  as  a  rule, 
last  longer  than  six  or  seven  years  at  most, 
and  the  average  is  much  shorter.  In  the 
United  States  their  duration  is  strictly  lim- 
ited by  the  constitution.  In  Canada  they 
tend  to  last  too  long,  owing  largely  to  the 
difficulty  of  arousing  public  opinion  in  a 
population  scattered  over  a  vast  area. 

Under  the  Canadian,  which  is  the  British, 
system,  the  only  persons  chosen  by  election 


118       THE  UNITED  STATES 

are  the  members  of  the  legislatm'e.  This 
principle  apphes  in  the  federal  system  of  the 
United  States,  except  in  respect  to  the  office 
of  the  President.  In  the  state  governments, 
however,  secretaries,  treasurers,  auditors, 
and  even  judges  are,  in  varying  degree,  ac- 
cording to  the  constitution  of  each  state, 
chosen  by  popular  vote.  In  the  British  sys- 
tem the  members  of  the  cabinet,  that  is  to 
say,  the  chief  executive  officers  of  the  govern- 
ment, from  the  prime  minister,  who  is  really 
the  Canadian  equivalent  of  the  President,  to 
the  least  important  member  of  his  govern- 
ment, must  have  seats  in  the  legislature,  and 
there  give  an  account  of  the  administration 
of  their  offices.  To  take  part  in  the  work  of 
legislation  is  often  an  irksome  duty  for  men 
weighted  with  complex  matters  of  adminis- 
tration, but  it  has  come  to  be  regarded  as  in- 
dispensable to  the  working  of  parliamentary 
government.  In  Canada  no  legislature  is 
chosen  for  a  period  of  less  than  four  years, 
and  the  federal  House  of  Commons  is  chosen 
for  five  years.  The  long  term  is  safe  enough 
when,  in  response  to  public  opinion,  an  elec- 
tion may  take  place  at  any  time,  but  it  would 


AND  CANADA  119 

not  commend  itself  in  the  United  States, 
with  the  member  free  from  attack  in  his  seat 
for  a  fixed  period.  In  Canada,  as  in  Eng- 
land, the  government  is  dominated  by  a  sin- 
gle chamber,  the  House  of  Commons,  whose 
will  the  second  chamber  is,  in  the  long  run, 
impotent  to  resist.  It  would  be  impossible  to 
have  two  chambers  of  equal  authority  and  at 
the  same  time  to  have  parliamentary  govern- 
ment, since,  in  such  a  case,  a  deadlock  be- 
tween the  two  houses  might  prevent  an  ap- 
peal to  the  people.  "You  might  as  well  at- 
tempt to  stick  a  dog's  tail  on  a  lion's  back" 
as  to  have  a  strong  second  chamber  with  par- 
liamentary government,  said  Joseph  Howe, 
of  Nova  Scotia,  and  Great  Britain  has  found 
that  she  must  have  a  weak  House  of  Lords 
if  the  country  is  to  be  ruled  under  the  pub- 
lic opinion  of  a  democracy.  The  contrast 
with  the  strength  of  the  American  Senate  is 
striking. 

In  the  Canadian  federal  system  there  are 
restrictions  on  the  authority  of  the  provinces 
which  stand  in  contrast  with  the  rights  of  the 
states  in  the  United  States.  In  a  certain 
sense  the  forming  of  the  Canadian  federation 


K 


/'- 


120       THE  UNITED  STATES 

involved  the  breaking-up  of  an  earlier  union 
as  much  as  it  did  the  creation  of  a  new  one. 
The  older  Canada,  consisting  of  the  two 
great  provinces  which  are  now  Ontario  and 
Quebec,  had  existed  for  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury under  a  single  legislature  in  which 
French  and  English  members  were  about 
equal  in  number.  There  was  intense  racial 
strife  and,  in  the  end,  federation  was  a  refuge 
from  an  unhappy  union.  In  such  a  case  it 
was  easy  for  the  constitution  builders  to 
delegate  to  each  of  the  new  provinces  only 
the  matters  which  had  chiefly  caused  friction 
— religion  and  education — and  with  these  the 
other  affairs  of  a  local  character.  Thus  it 
has  come  about  that  in  Canada  the  provinces 
have  only  the  powers  specifically  delegated 
while  the  central  government  retains  all  other 
authority.  This  principle,  so  sharply  in  con- 
trast with  that  apphed  in  the  United  States 
of  giving  limited  and  specified  powers  to  the 
federal  government  while  the  states  retain 
all  the  rest,  has  made  it  natural  in  Canada 
to  have  a  common  criminal  law  for  the  whole 
country,  and  a  single  judiciary,  which  admin- 
isters both  federal  and  provincial  law.    No 


AND  CANADA  121 

judges  are  either  appointed  by  the  provinces 
or  elected  in  Canada.  All  judges  are  named 
by  the  federal  government.  Yet,  except  in 
the  cases  of  the  judges  of  the  federal  Su- 
preme Court  and  the  single  judge  of  the 
Exchequer  Court,  which  deals  with  the  finan- 
cial relations  of  the  federal  and  the  provin- 
cial governments,  all  the  judges  of  Canada 
are  paid  by  the  provinces  in  which  they  exer- 
cise their  functions.  It  has  been  the  federal 
government  which  has  vindicated  the  sanctity 
of  the  law  in  the  more  unsettled  regions,  and 
this  has  resulted  in  so  strong  a  preservation 
of  order  that  lynching  is  unknown.  Only 
the  federal  government  can  exercise  the  pre- 
rogative of  pardon.  No  criminal  undergoes 
anywhere  in  Canada  the  sentence  of  death 
without  the  gravest  consideration  of  his  case 
by  the  central  federal  authority.  One  impor- 
tant contrast  in  the  two  systems  depends  only 
on  practice  and  has  no  inherent  necessity. 
Canada  has  copied  the  sj^stem  of  England 
and  has  the  budget  control  in  finance.  Only 
the  government  of  the  day  can  propose  the 
expenditure  of  public  money.  Each  year 
the  Minister  of  Finance  submits  an  elaborate 


K 


122       THE  UNITED  STATES 

statement  of  expected  income  and  expendi- 
ture, and  no  additions  to  the  proposed  expen- 
diture can  be  made  without  the  consent  of 
the  government.  At  this  moment  there  is 
keen  discussion  as  to  whether  the  United 
States  should  adopt  this  budget  system. 

To  point  out  contrasts  in  the  sense  of  sug- 
gesting that  a  good  practice  in  one  country- 
would  of  necessity  work  amid  different  con- 
ditions in  another  is  to  be  guilty  of  the  arch- 
fallacy  in  politics  that  what  works  anjivhere 
will  work  everywhere.  Would  the  British 
Cabinet  system  under  parliamentary  gov- 
ernment work  in  the  United  States?  We  do 
not  know;  it  is  one  thing  to  work  a  system 
in  a  compact  and  crowded  island  where  every 
one,  through  an  active  press,  can  ponder  on 
the  same  day  the  same  political  problems, 
and  quite  another  to  apply  successfully  such 
a  system  in  an  area  thirty  or  forty  times  as 
great,  with  varying  chmates,  a  large  part  of 
the  population  scattered  and  remote,  and 
communications  often  slow  and  difficult.  In 
the  island  public  opinion  is  alert  and  united 
because  it  is  easy  to  appeal  to  the  many  at 
almost  the  same  hour.    But  it  is  not  so  easy 


AND  CANADA  123 

to  get  California  to  ponder  the  problems  of 
Maine,  or,  in  a  different  scene  from  that  of 
Maine,  to  understand  conditions  which  may- 
be alien  to  the  thought  of  its  people.  There 
is  a  comforting  maxim  in  the  moral  world 
that  each  of  us  gets  the  lot  which  he  deserves. 
It  may  be  true  of  nations  that  each  matures 
the  system  best  fitted  to  its  own  conditions. 
At  any  rate,  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that 
it  is  rarely  wise  to  transfer  the  system  of  one 
country  to  another.  Political  philosophers 
are  fond  of  saying  that  Great  Britain  would 
do  well  to  adopt  the  federal  system  of  the 
United  States.  Yet  it  is  clear  that  as  yet  all 
practical  steps  to  carry  out  such  a  plan  have 
seemed  to  fail,  and  that  to-day  Ireland,  sup- 
posed to  be  able  to  find  the  solution  of  its 
heart-breaking  discords  in  a  federal  union 
with  Great  Britain,  is  coldly  critical  of  such 
proposals. 


124       THE  UNITED  STATES 


LECTURE  y 

THE  PLACE  OF  CANADA  IN  THE 
BRITISH  COMMONWEALTH 

The  United  States  and  Canada,  speaking 
the  same  language,  occupy  the  greater  part 
of  a  vast  continent,  and  it  is  of  some  import 
to  mankind  that  they  should  understand  each 
other.  Yet  in  this  there  are  peculiar  diffi- 
culties. The  most  vivid  historical  recollec- 
tion of  the  people  of  the  United  States  is 
that  once  they  were  colonies  of  England,  and 
that  after  a  long  and  cruel  war  they  estab- 
lished their  independence  and  united  to  form 
a  republic.  To  them  the  relation  of  parent 
to  daughter  state  is  the  relation  of  superior 
to  inferior,  of  a  patronizing  and  protecting 
society  to  one  that  is  as  yet  immature  and 
weak.  It  must  be  confessed  that  there  is  in 
history  abundant  justification  for  this  inter- 
pretation of  the  imperial  relation.  If,  how- 
ever, it  were  the  whole  story,  there  would  be 
at  the  present  time  no  British  Empire,  except 


AND  CANADA  125 

in  the  sense  of  a  conquering  England  hold- 
ing some  scattered  islands  and  naval  stations 
and  the  territory  which  her  legions  had  mas- 
tered. France  and  Holland  still  have  great 
possessions  overseas ;  but  they  are  not  states 
inhabited  by  French  and  Dutch  who  have 
migrated  from  the  motherland.  They  are 
literally  possessions,  with  alien  peoples,  who, 
no  doubt  for  their  own  good,  are,  in  the  ulti- 
mate analysis,  held  in  obedience  to  the  mas- 
ter state  by  military  power.  No  communi- 
ties composed  of  the  flesh  and  blood  of  the 
motherland  will  ever  be  satisfied  with  an  infe- 
rior status.  Spain  lost  her  colonies  because 
the  Spaniard  in  America  would  not  Le  sub- 
ordinate to  the  Spaniard  in  Europe.  The 
only  other  great  colonizing  power  has  been 
Great  Britain.  She  lost  her  American  col- 
onies because  she  demanded  their  obedience. 
On  the  same  condition  she  would  in  time  also 
have  lost  Canada  and  Australia.  There  re- 
mains a  great  British  state  because  of  the 
growth  of  a  different  type  of  relation. 

So  far  as  the  self-governing  nations  of  the 
British  Commonwealth  are  concerned,  there 
is  now  really  no  such  thing  as  a  British  Em- 


126      THE  UNITED  STATES 

pire.  An  empire,  one  would  suppose,  is  a 
state  which  has  a  central  controlling  gov- 
ernment. But  although  the  British  Parha- 
ment  is,  in  a  strictly  legal,  though  not  con- 
stitutional, sense,  supreme  over  all  British 
dominions,  there  is  no  central  government 
for  the  whole  British  Empire.  The  Parlia- 
ment of  Great  Britain  has  no  constitutional 
right  to  pass  any  measure  affecting  the  gov- 
ernment of  Canada,  except  merely  as  regis- 
tering Canada's  own  decisions.  No  one  body 
can  tax  the  British  Empire.  Canada  and 
Australia  and  New  Zealand  and  South 
Africa  are  not  governed  from  London,  nor 
have  they  any  common  government.  Each 
of  these  nations  governs  itself.  As  long  ago 
as  in  1859,  when  Canada  imposed  a  tariff  on 
British  goods  and  the  government  at  London 
protested,  there  was  no  uncertain  sound 
about  the  reply  of  Canada.  It  asserted  "the 
right  of  the  Canadian  Legislature  to  adjust 
the  taxation  of  the  people  in  the  way  they 
deem  best,  even  if  it  should  unfortunately 
happen  to  meet  the  disapproval  of  the  Im- 
perial Ministry."  It  is  more  fitting  to  de- 
scribe as  a  "Commonwealth"    than    as    an 


AND  CANADA  127 

"Empire"  the  state  in  which  the  different 
parts  are  so  completely  self-governing/ 

The  most  interesting  growth  in  the  Brit- 
ish Empire  during  the  nineteenth  century- 
was  in  the  self-government  and  individuality 
of  the  various  British  peoples.  There  was 
very  httle  of  it  in  the  British  Empire  of  a 
hundred  years  ago.  The  American  Revolu- 
tion removed  from  the  Empire  the  only  ele- 
ment overseas  that  could  make  any  claim  to 
self-government.  After  that  tragic  cleav- 
age between  the  English-speaking  peoples, 
almost  none  of  British  origin  were  left  out- 
side the  homeland.  In  Canada,  even  in- 
cluding the  Loyalist  refugees  from  the  re- 
volted colonies,  there  were  fewer  than  one 
hundred  thousand.  The  same  is  true  of  the 
West  Indies,  relatively  more  important  then 
than  now.  In  India  there  were  perhaps  half 
this  number.  And  this  was  the  whole  tale 
of  British  people  overseas.  Australia,  New 
Zealand,  South  Africa,  as  we  know  them,  did 
not  then  exist.    There  is  httle  wonder  that 

^  This  and  succeeding  paragraphs  are,  with  some  modifica- 
tions, taken  from  an  article  by  the  author  on  "The  Growth 
of  Nationalism  in  the  British  Empire"  in  The  American  Hit- 
iorical  Review,  October,  lOlG. 


128       THE  UNITED  STATES 

the  successful  revolutionists  of  the  United 
States  should  feel  a  fine  scorn  of  the  Britons 
in  Canada  who  would  not  join  them.  These 
seemed  to  be  misguided  supporters  of  a 
lost  cause.  A  tyrannous  motherland  had 
forfeited  all  right  to  the  allegiance  of  her 
sons  overseas,  and  successful  revolution 
called  the  Canadians  craven,  since  they  did 
not  join  in  the  fight  for  liberty. 

It  was,  indeed,  in  the  half-century  after 
the  Revolution  that  there  was  a  real  and 
united  British  Empire,  for  every  part  of  it 
was  governed  from  London.  It  is  true  that 
never  after  her  loss  in  America  did  Britain 
attempt  to  tax  her  colonies.  They  were  to 
her  a  costly  burden.  What  we  now  know 
as  the  Dominion  of  Canada  consisted  of  four 
or  five  detached  provinces,  each  insignificant, 
each  really  ruled  by  a  governor  sent  out  from 
England,  each  backward  and  almost  stag- 
nant. Little  thought  as  yet  had  any  of  the 
colonies  that  they  were  new  nations,  with 
the  same  rights  of  self-government  which 
Britons  at  home  possessed.  Yet  was  there 
a  something  working  in  these  communities 
which  had  promise  for  the  future.    Each  of 


AND  CANADA  129 

them  had  its  own  legislature;  each  had  the 
storm  and  tumult  of  elections,  in  which  there 
were  free  speech  and  free  voting.  The 
elected  members,  however,  did  not  control 
the  executive  government ;  that  was  the  affair 
of  the  governor  and  of  the  Colonial  Office 
in  London,  which  appointed  him. 

With  the  growth  of  population  came 
changes.  By  1830  there  was  a  clamorous 
demand  in  Upper  and  Lower  Canada  for 
complete  control  by  the  people  of  their  own 
local  affairs.  The  controversy  was  violent. 
In  1837  and  1838  it  led  to  armed  rebellion 
by  the  radical  element  which  asked  for  full 
poHtical  rights.  Though  the  rebellion  was 
put  down,  the  cause  apparently  lost  was 
really  won.  A  dozen  years  later,  that  is  by 
the  middle  of  the  century,  every  British  com- 
munity in  North  America  had  secured  con- 
trol of  its  own  affairs.  The  movement  spread 
to  other  continents.  Australia  followed 
quickly.  Canada  was  the  older  British  do- 
minion and  naturally  led  the  way,  but  the 
British  colonial  system  as  a  whole  was 
changed,  and  by  the  mid-century  its  self- 
governing  states  in  all  parts  of  the  world 


130      THE  UNITED  STATES 

were  really  freer  than  had  been  the  former 
Enghsh  colonies  in  America. 

This  very  change,  however,  brought  a  dan- 
ger to  the  British  system.  Why  should  the 
motherland  take  any  trouble  to  preserve  a 
tie  with  communities  which  brought  her  little 
advantage?  They  erected  hostile  tariffs 
against  her  goods,  they  were  a  charge  upon 
her  revenues,  they  were  perennially  relying 
upon  her  army  and  fleet  for  defense.  Can- 
ada was  frquently  involved  in  disputes  with 
the  United  States.  In  1837-1838  there  were 
frontier  incidents  which  might  well  have 
caused  war.  A  few  years  later  there  was 
the  question  of  the  boundary  line  in  Maine. 
Then  came  that  of  the  western  boundary, 
with  the  insistent  demand  of  American  pio- 
neers in  the  west  of  "Fifty-four  forty  or 
fight,"  which  meant  that  all  south  of  this  de- 
gree of  latitude  should  go  to  the  United 
States  on  penalty  of  war.  There  is  perhaps 
not  much  wonder  that  British  statesmen 
should  have  thought  a  self-governing  em- 
pire overseas  not  worth  having.  Gladstone 
told  Goldwin  Smith  that  the  cession  of  Can- 
ada to  the  United  States  would  not  be  an 


AND  CANADA  131 

impossible  compensation  to  the  North  if  the 
South  should  break  away.  Beaconsfield, 
Gladstone's  great  rival,  hoped  at  one  time 
that  the  troublesome  colonies  would  become 
independent.  When  this  was  done  Britain 
would  be  left  with  no  European  peoples 
overseas,  but  only  with  races  of  ahen  blood 
and  faith  whom  she  could  really  rule. 

Then,  just  when  these  depressing  views 
were  current,  a  strange  thing  happened. 
The  half -torpid  colonies  in  North  America 
suddenly  revealed  a  new  life  and  a  new  wis- 
dom. They  shook  off  their  narrow  isolation 
and  formed  a  great  federation.  Fear  had 
much  to  do  with  it.  The  United  States,  re- 
cently torn  by  civil  war,  was  likely  to  become 
a  great  military  nation,  a  menace  to  the 
British  communities  on  its  northern  border. 
Because  of  this  and  of  impotence  and  dead- 
look  in  their  own  political  affairs,  the  Brit- 
ish colonies  united  to  form  one  gi-eat  state. 
By  1872,  the  union  of  once  separated  colo- 
nies extended  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pa- 
cific. In  this  movement,  if  men  could  have 
read  it  aright,  was  the  birth  of  a  new  con- 
ception of  the  British  Commonwealth.   But 


132      THE  UNITED  STATES 

this  meaning  was  not  seen  at  once.  For  a  long 
time  the  old  idea  of  the  subordination  of  the 
colonies  to  the  motherland  still  survived.  But 
the  movement  for  separation  was  quickly- 
checked.  It  was  one  thing  for  British  states- 
men to  look  on  blandly  while  a  few  scattered 
colonies  broke  away ;  but  quite  another  thing 
to  let  a  country  like  Canada  go  with  four 
million  people.  After  all,  trade  tended  to 
follow  the  flag,  and  thus,  even  on  lower  com- 
mercial grounds,  it  would  be  a  bad  thing  to 
end  the  colonial  relation.  Other  reasons 
there  were,  too,  and  one  of  them,  most  potent 
of  all,  was  that,  even  though  Great  Britain 
might  be  willing  to  let  go  of  Canada,  Canada 
had  no  wish  to  let  go  of  Britain. 

Here  we  come  upon  one  of  the  unexpected 
things  in  this  strange  British  Empire.  The 
old  assumption  was  that  when  the  new  states 
were  strong  enough  to  stand  alone  they 
would  wish  to  do  so  and  would  break  away 
from  the  mother  country.  But  this  repre- 
sented only  the  coldly  intellectual  view  of 
politics.  In  fact,  political  loyalties  have  as 
much  to  do  with  the  heart  as  with  the  head. 
It  never  occurred  to  the  average  Canadian, 


AND  CANADA  133 

even  when  his  country  reached  national  stat- 
ure, that  he  could  not  remain  both  a  Cana- 
dian and  a  Briton.  The  British  flag  had  al- 
ways been  his.  Why  should  he  change? 
True,  he  was  a  Canadian  first,  for  Canada 
was  the  country  he  knew.  Britain  he  had 
probably  never  seen,  and  he  understood  but 
little  of  a  state  of  society  in  which  there  were 
an  aristocracy,  a  House  of  Lords,  and  an 
established  church.  Still  he  saw  no  reason 
why  he  should  break  with  the  old  home  of  his 
race  and  no  movement  for  separation  would 
come  from  him. 

There  was  too  a  strong  political  drift 
against  change.  Union  was  in  the  air  when 
the  federation  of  Canada  was  created.  This 
event  followed  immediately  upon  the  reun- 
ion of  the  United  States  after  the  Civil  War. 
The  North-German  Confederation  was 
formed  in  the  very  year  in  which  the  British 
North  America  Act,  creating  the  Dominion 
of  Canada,  passed  the  British  Parliament. 
Three  years  later  Italy  was  finally  united. 
In  the  next  year,  1871,  came  the  creation  of 
the  German  Empire.  This  was  followed 
quickly  by  an  eager  ambition  among  Euro- 


134       THE  UNITED  STATES 

pean  states  to  secure  colonies.  Trade  rival- 
ries were  keen,  markets  were  needed,  and 
markets  under  the  samje  flag  seemed  to  be 
more  secure  than  markets  under  an  alien  flag. 
It  thus  happened  that  the  ungracious  per- 
mission offered  to  the  colonies  about  1860 
that  they  might  go  when  they  liked,  and  the 
sooner  the  better,  had  become  by  1890,  thirty 
years  later,  the  rather  nervous  fear  that  they 
might  take  themselves  off  and  leave  Great 
Britain  to  a  lonely  sovereignty  over  a  de- 
pendent empire  ten  times  more  populous 
than  herself. 

During  all  this  time  the  movement  was 
growing  for  unions  within  the  Empire  on 
the  lines  of  the  Canadian  union.  In  1900 
the  six  Australian  states  united  to  form  a 
great  Commonwealth.  Most  wonderful  of 
all,  less  than  ten  years  later,  the  four  col- 
onies of  war-worn  South  Africa  formed  a 
strong  union  more  centralized  and  consoli- 
dated than  any  of  the  other  unions  in  the 
British  Empire.  In  no  case,  however,  was 
union  effected  with  the  view  of  breaking 
away  from  the  Empire.  Rather  was  the  de- 
sign to  draw  closer  together.  Yet  each  union 


AND  CANADA  135 

represented  a  distinct  type  and  was  brought 
about  in  conformity  with  local  conditions. 
Here,  then,  is  the  paradox  which  is  charac- 
teristic of  the  British  nations — the  more 
they  become  separate  in  type  the  more  they 
hold  together. 

The  unity  of  outlook  with  Great  Britain 
was  tested  in  Canada  in  1899,  when  the 
South  African  War  broke  out.  The  people 
of  Canada  accepted  without  reserve  the  Brit- 
ish view  of  the  issue  and  thousands  of  Cana- 
dians fought  on  the  veldt.  Britain,  how- 
ever, paid  the  bill.  Canada  was  not  a  real 
partner.  It  was  the  Great  War,  begun  in 
1914,  which  brought  to  a  head  a  long  proc- 
ess of  development.  Complete  self-govern- 
ment in  respect  to  domestic  affairs  Canada 
had  had  for  nearly  three-quarters  of  a  cen- 
tury. There  remained,  however,  this  lack 
of  full  national  life,  that  she  had  no  direct 
diplomatic  relations  with  other  states.  The 
government  of  Canada  had  no  power  to 
deal  with  the  government  of  the  United 
States ;  a  treaty  made  in  reality  between  the 
United  States  and  Canada  was  in  name  be- 
tween the  United  States  and  Great  Britain. 


136      THE  UNITED  STATES 

When,  during  the  war,  a  Canadian  War 
Mission  was  sent  to  Washington  this  diffi- 
culty was  overcome  by  the  subterfuge,  hu- 
mihating  in  form  if  hardly  so  in  fact,  that 
the  Mission  might  deal  with  the  departments 
of  the  government  of  the  United  States  but 
not  with  that  government  itself.  Canada 
was  not  classed  as  an  American  nation,  with 
the  result  that  when  a  Pan-American  Con- 
gress came  together  the  American  state  which 
ranked  in  importance  next  to  the  United 
States  had  no  place.  Before  the  war  it  was 
uncertain  what  part  self-governing  states 
like  Canada  and  Austraha  would  take  when 
Great  Britain  became  involved  in  a  struggle 
which  should  tax  her  full  strength.  The 
breathless  days  of  the  summer  of  1914  set- 
tled this  doubt.  Then  it  became  clear  that 
on  a  vital  issue  the  whole  British  Empire 
would  act  together.  No  nation  was  more 
surprised  than  Britain  herself  by  the  com- 
pleteness of  the  union  of  hearts. 

This  war  was  Canada's  first  war.  Never 
before  had  she  recruited  and  paid  her  own 
armies  in  a  great  struggle.  People  care- 
less of  speech  sometimes  say  that  Canada 


AND  CANADA  137 

went  into  the  war  to  help  England ;  but  this 
was  not  really  the  thought  of  the  Canadian 
people  any  more  than  it  was  that  of  the 
Scottish  people.  What  the  British  peoples 
felt  was  that  they  were  fighting  together  as 
partners.  Fears  there  were  in  Canada  that 
her  civihan  soldiers  might  not  be  able  to 
bear  the  test  of  war  against  the  greatest  mil- 
itary power  in  the  world.  But  before  a  year 
of  war  had  passed  this  fear  was  gone.  As 
thre  war  lengthened  world-wide  organization 
of  British  effort  became  necessary.  In 
March,  1917,  a  Conference  on  the  War  of 
representatives  of  the  whole  British  Empire 
was  held  in  London,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  direction  of  the  war  was  put  in  the  hands 
of  a  new  body  called  the  Imperial  War  Cab- 
inet, in  which  sat  the  British,  the  Canadian, 
and  other  prime  ministers.  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  was  careful  to  say  in  the  British 
House  of  Commons  that  the  status  of  the 
members  of  this  Cabinet  was  one  "of  abso- 
lute equality."  In  the  absence  of  the  prime 
minister  of  Great  Britain,  the  prime  minis- 
ter of  Canada  presided,  since  Canada  ranked 
as  second  among  the  self-governing  states 


138       THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  the  Empire.  Each  of  these  states  was 
by  official  pronouncement  declared  to  be  "an 
autonomous  nation."  When  peace  was  to 
be  negotiated  it  was  the  British  Empire  Del- 
egation, with  Canada  playing  an  important 
part,  which  directed  British  policy.  Thus 
within  the  British  Empire  equality  of  status 
between  Canada  and  Great  Britain  was  fully 
recognized.  It  remained,  however,  to  record 
international  recognition  of  this  fact.  This 
was  done  when  peace  was  made.  Plenipo- 
tentiaries of  Canada  signed  the  peace  with 
direct  official  authority  from  the  king  to  sign 
for  Canada,  exactly  as  plenipotentiaries  of 
Great  Britain  signed  with  official  authority 
from  the  king  to  sign  for  Great  Britain. 
This  was  the  culminating  official  act  in  a 
great  pohtical  movement.  The  British  Em- 
pire had  become  a  Commonwealth  of  Na- 
tions, and  each  of  the  nations  was  entitled  to 
the  fullest  expression  of  its  national  life. 

Usually  the  full  meaning  of  a  great  con- 
stitutional change  is  not  immediately  appar- 
ent. Unless  there  is  the  upheaval  of  revolu- 
tion the  old  machinery  goes  on  working. 
There  are  things  which  still  seem  to  indicate 


AND  CANADA  139 

that  Canada  is  in  a  state  of  tutelage  to  Great 
Britain,  and  these  things  will  disappear  only 
slowly  as  occasion  arises  to  consider  and  dis- 
card them.  The  head  of  the  Canadian  na- 
tion, acting  for  the  king,  is  called  the  Gover- 
nor-General; he  is  appointed  by  the  British 
government,  and,  in  some  measure,  he  is 
an  official  of  the  Colonial  Office.  In  fact,  he 
is  not  a  governor  but  a  viceroy,  with  only 
the  authority  in  Canada  which  the  king  has 
in  England;  in  fact,  while  he  is  appointed 
by  the  government  in  London,  it  is  only  with 
the  approval  of  Canada ;  in  fact,  too,  the  Co- 
lonial Office  has  no  authority  in  Canada,  for 
the  prime  minister  of  Canada  and  the  prime 
minister  of  Great  Britain  take  counsel  to- 
gether and  reach  decisions  on  the  important 
questions  between  the  two  countries.  Can- 
ada has  no  Foreign  Office,  and,  as  yet,  no 
ambassadors.  But  she  has  now  the  full  con- 
stitutional right  to  create  both  when  she  so 
chooses.  In  the  strict  letter  of  the  law  Can- 
ada is  at  war  when  Great  Britain  is  at  war ; 
but  the  events  connected  with  the  peace 
treaty  made  her  separate  consent  to  peace 
necessary  and  this  may  involve  the  corollary 


140       THE  UNITED  STATES 

that  she  is  not  at  war  without  her  specific 
consent.  Far-reaching,  indeed,  will  be  seen 
to  be  the  constitutional  changes  of  the  period 
of  the  Great  War. 

It  is  to  be  expected  that  when  the  experi- 
ence of  a  few  years  has  shown  that  Canada 
has  her  special  interests  in  foreign  affairs 
and  is  not  content  to  be  merely  the  pupil  of 
Great  Britain,  there  will  be  some  friendly 
cleavage  between  the  two  countries.  Great 
Britain  has  so  long  controlled  the  foreign 
policy  of  the  British  Empire,  with  undivided 
responsibihty,  that  she  may  well  feel  sur- 
prise and  even  resentment  at  Canada's  as- 
sertion of  variant  views.  When  Canada,  as 
an  American  nation,  takes  her  place  in  the 
assembly  of  the  League  of  Nations  she  will 
stand  more  for  the  American  than  for  the 
European  view  of  world  policy.  In  respect 
to  Japan,  Canada's  interests  are  rather  those 
of  the  United  States  than  of  Great  Britain. 
Such  differences  of  opinion  will,  however, 
be  wholesome.  They  will  tend  to  prevent 
Great  Britain,  after  all  a  world  state  with 
vital  interests  in  every  continent,  from  being 
too    completely    dominated    by    interests 


AND  CANADA  141 

merely  Asiatic  or  European.  At  the  same 
time  Canada,  drawn  out  of  obscure  isola- 
tion, will  learn  to  understand  the  burdens 
of  a  great  Empire.  The  result  ought  to  be 
a  better  understanding  all  round.  The 
British  nations  are  really  closer  together  in 
1920  than  they  were  in  1850,  chiefly  because 
in  the  intervening  seventy  years  they  worked 
out  the  same  ideals  of  political  liberty.  An- 
other cycle  of  years  may  see  them  united  in 
sharing  the  same  responsibilities  in  a  world 
commonwealth,  and,  if  this  result  is  to  be 
reached,  it  will  be  along  the  path  of  bearing, 
each  state  for  itself,  the  responsibilities  of 
British  nationhood. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  variety  of  environ- 
ment tends  to  produce  a  variety  of  peoples. 
The  Canadian  is  different  from  the  Austral- 
ian, and  both  are  different  from  the  Enghsh- 
man.  The  differences  are  physical  and  they 
are  also  mental.  The  man  who  has  seen  the 
society  about  him  created  in  his  own  genera- 
tion will  have  a  view  of  social  relations  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  a  man  born  into  a  highly 
organized  society,  with  ancient  buildings, 
traditions,  and  gradations  of  rank.     It  is 


142      THE  UNITED  STATES 

easier  for  an  Englishman  than  it  is  for  a 
Canadian  to  show  deference  and  respect. 
The  Canadian,  in  turn,  is  a  citizen  of  a  lesser 
state,  and  is  humbled  commercially  by  con- 
tact with  a  great  neighbor  much  more  highly 
organized  than  himself.  The  Australian, 
supreme  in  his  lonely  continent  in  the  South- 
ern Sea,  has  no  old  local  traditions  and  no 
neighbors.  He  creates  his  own  standards 
and  believes  in  himself.  When  shown  West- 
minster Abbey  he  may  murmur,  "Ah,  but 
you  ought  to  see  the  Presbyterian  Church  at 
Ballarat!"  He  is  subtly  different  from  the 
other  types.  The  difference  is  not  racial, 
for  the  race  is  the  same.  It  is  the  difference 
caused  by  conditions,  and  it  will  increase  with 
time.  You  will  not  flatter  the  Australian 
by  calling  him  an  Englishman.  He  wishes 
to  be  known  as  what  he  is,  an  Australian. 
In  this  respect  his  nationalism  is  complete. 
This,  however,  is  not  the  whole  story.  This 
man,  so  thoroughly  himself  in  his  southern 
home,  is  passionately  a  Briton  and  one  in 
feeling  with  all  other  Britons.  The  thought- 
ful Australian  or  Canadian  will  deny  that 
he  owes  any  loyalty  to  the  British  Isles.    He 


AND  CANADA  143 

feels  this  no  more  than  the  Englishman  feels 
loyalty  to  Canada.  Each  of  them  is  satisfied 
to  be  loyal  to  himself  and  they  hold  together 
because,  on  great  national  issues,  they  have 
the  same  outlook.  I  am  a  little  puzzled  when 
I  try  to  explain  why  this  unity  exists.  No 
doubt  it  is  largely  the  result  of  education,  of 
habitually  surveying  questions  from  a  cer- 
tain point  of  view.  Probably  its  deepest 
cause  lies  in  unbroken  tradition.  Each  of  us 
is  set  in  the  midst  of  a  system  in  which  many 
forces  are  uniting  to  shape  our  conception 
of  life.  British  pohtical  liberty  has  had  a 
slow  growth.  The  religious  outlook,  the 
education,  the  social  relations,  the  tastes  and 
habits  of  to-day  come  to  us  from  a  long  past. 
In  some  such  way  as  this  is  the  note  struck 
that  we  call  British.  All  the  people  of  the 
scattered  British  Commonwealth  share  it, 
and,  though  there  are  different  types,  widely 
separated,  they  have  the  unity  of  a  family. 

This  unity  is  not  racial.  Racial  unity  is 
necessarily  limited  to  those  whom  birth  has 
made  members  of  the  race.  Thus  it  cannot 
become  comprehensive  and  cosmopolitan. 
It  tends  to  run  to  pride  and  arrogance,  to 


144      THE  UNITED  STATES 

thoughts  like  those  of  the  Hebrew  that  his 
race  is  the  chosen  of  God.  When  the  British 
Empire  was  younger  we  used  to  hear  about 
the  triumphant  destiny  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race.  At  one  time  we  seemed  to  seek  uni- 
formity, partly,  perhaps,  because  we  as- 
sumed unity  of  race.  It  was  held  that  poHti- 
cal  wisdom  required  in  Canada  and  in 
Australia  an  exact  copy  of  Britain.  Can- 
ada, as  we  have  seen,  was  to  have  a  House  of 
Lords  and  an  established  church.  Experi- 
ence, the  true  teacher,  dispelled  this  dream. 
In  time  not  likeness,  but  diversity,  of  institu- 
tions was  emphasized,  and  httle  thought  was 
given  to  race.  We  know  now  that  no  one 
part  of  the  British  Empire  can  be  quite  like 
any  other  part.  When  we  ask  why,  the  an- 
swer is  that  this  is  the  fruit  of  liberty.  Na- 
ture herself  is  infinitely  varied  and,  when 
men  are  free,  when  they  adjust  themselves 
to  the  varieties  of  nature,  they  evolve  differ- 
ences. To-day  no  wise  statesman  has  any 
thought  of  trying  to  Anglicize  the  British 
Empire.  The  wonder-worker  is  not  race 
but  hberty.  Let  us  dismiss  forever  the  super- 
stition that  there  is  any  magic  in  race  to  hold 


AND  CANADA  145 

peoples  together  and  effect  political  unity. 
In  the  late  war  the  most  determined  and 
irreconcilable  opponents  were  states  of  the 
same  Teutonic  race.  It  is  partnership  in 
common  liberties  which  unites  people. 

Without  including  annexations  due  to  the 
war,  the  British  Commonwealth  represents 
about  one-fourth  both  of  the  population  and 
of  the  area  of  the  world.  The  population  of 
the  world  is  about  1,800,000,000;  the  area 
some  51,230,000  square  miles.  The  British 
Commonwealth  is  nearly  evenly  divided  be- 
tween the  northern  and  the  southern  hemi- 
spheres. Two- thirds  of  it  are  in  the  east  and 
only  one-third  is  in  the  west.  The  chief  seat 
of  power  is  in  the  west,  but  six-sevenths  of 
the  people  under  British  sovereignty  are  not 
Europeans.  The  proportion  of  people  of 
European  origin  is  likely  to  grow,  since  they 
hold  for  occupation  nearly  two-thirds  of  the 
whole  area  of  the  British  Commonwealth, 
with  vast  unoccupied  spaces  still  to  be  peo- 
pled. It  is  a  vital  characteristic  of  the  Brit- 
ish system  that,  in  spite  of  the  recent  war,  it 
is  becoming  less  and  less  occupied  chiefly 
with  Europe.     It  is  of  the  east  as  well  as 


146      THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  the  west  and  of  the  south  as  well  as  of 
the  north.  It  is  less  a  creation  than  a 
growth,  a  growth  out  of  conditions  and  ne- 
cessities into  a  system  unprecedented  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  It  has  become  a  micro- 
cosm of  the  world  itself.  It  includes  people 
of  every  race  and  of  every  creed.  No  other 
state  has  ever  held  such  vast  areas  in  every 
continent — almost  half  of  North  America, 
much  of  fertile  Africa,  nearly  the  whole  of 
Australasia,  and  a  great  area  in  Asia.  In 
Europe  alone  is  the  territory  of  the  Com- 
monwealth comparatively  small  in  magni- 
tude. There  are  in  it  more  than  three  times 
as  many  Hindus  and  nearly  twice  as  many 
Moslems  as  there  are  Christians. 

"If  the  Canadians  loved  liberty,"  said  an 
American  senator  recently,*  "they  would  not 
stay  under  the  British  flag."  Virginia  and 
other  States  desired  to  withdraw  from  the 
American  union  and  were  retained  within 
it  by  force  of  arms.  Canada,  free  to  go,  stays 
in  the  British  union.  She  is  freer  to  go  than 
was  Virginia,  but  she  remains  under  the 
British  flag.    One  reason  is  her  pride  in  be- 

»  Debate  in  the  Senate,  March  8,  1920. 


AND  CANADA  147 

ing  a  member  of  a  great  Commonwealth. 
Let  me  ask  Americans  a  question.  If  the 
republic,  in  the  slow  growth  of  years,  had 
founded  kindred  republics  in  every  conti- 
nent, had  fostered  and  protected  them,  had 
dreamed  dreams  about  what  this  union  of 
free  peoples  would  do  for  mankind,  would 
you  wilhngly  let  this  union  end  in  disrup- 
tion? To-day  British  citizenship  is  wonder- 
ful, for  it  makes  the  Briton  at  home  in  every 
continent.  Suppose  that  an  American,  sail- 
ing eastward,  found  himself  in  another 
United  States  in  Europe  under  the  Stars 
and  Stripes.  Suppose  that  he  went  on  by  sea 
and  found  himself  in  South  Africa  and  still 
in  the  United  States  under  his  own  flag. 
Suppose  that  he  sailed  on  and  found  him- 
self in  India  with  more  than  three  hundred 
millions  of  people  still  under  the  Stars  and 
Stripes.  Suppose  that  he  went  on  to  the 
great  continent  of  Australia  and  found  still 
his  flag,  on  to  New  Zealand,  on  still  across 
the  Pacific  to  America,  where  he  has  his 
home,  half  a  continent  still  under  the  Stars 
and  Stripes.  In  every  one  of  these  states  he 
has  been  a  citizen,  needing  no  change  of  alle- 


148      THE  UNITED  STATES 

g^iance  in  order  to  vote.     And  this  is  the 
British  Commonwealth. 

In  this  Commonwealth  there  is,  as  I  have 
said,  no  one  central  government.  The  tie 
which  links  the  various  peoples  into  one  is 
allegiance  to  the  same  sovereign.  If  I  say- 
that  it  is  the  monarchy  which  holds  together 
the  Commonwealth,  I  am  likely  to  be  mis- 
miderstood,  for  this  is  apt  to  give  the  im- 
pression that  there  is  a  ruhng,  and  not 
merely  a  reigning,  king.  The  truth  is  that  the 
monarchy  expresses  visibly  the  bond  of  un- 
ion which  is  in  reality  spiritual.  Tradition, 
one  may  say  again,  plays  a  great  part  in  hu- 
man society.  Other  things  being  equal,  the 
scion  of  an  ancient  house  commands  greater 
influence  in  social  cu'cles  than  a  member  of 
the  nouveaux  riches.  Tradition  often  pro- 
duces its  effect  with  no  consciousness  on  the 
part  of  the  individual  that  it  even  exists.  The 
novelist  plays  with  this  instinct  when,  for  the 
entertainment  of  the  many,  he  brings  on  his 
stage  people  of  ancient  lineage  moving  in  ex- 
clusive circles,  in  scenes  of  magnificence, 
with  old  buildings,  tapestries,  and  pictures, 
inherited  from  a  glorious  past.     When  a 


AND  CANADA  149 

prince  passes,  our  eyes  turn  to  follow  him, 
less  because  of  what  he  is  in  himself  than 
because  of  the  long  tradition  which  he  rep- 
resents. The  letters  "E.  R."  recently  and 
the  letters  "G.  R."  now  on  mail  carts  in 
Canada  always  stir  my  interest.  "E.  R." 
"Edwardiis  Rex."  The  first  of  the  name  was 
"Malleus  Scotorum"  the  hammer  of  the 
Scots,  who  six  long  centuries  ago  broke  his 
enemies,  stood  up  for  his  kingly  rights 
against  a  powerful  church,  and  asserted  for 
future  ages  in  England  the  principle  that 
what  concerns  all  must  be  approved  by  all. 
The  letters  "G.  R."  call  up  a  past  less  happy 
in  what  it  did  than  useful  as  a  warning;  for 
it  was  a  Gcorgius  Rex  who  broke  up  in  dis- 
aster the  first  British  Empire.  It  is  some- 
thing to  the  British  peoples  that  the  symbols 
are  preserved  which  link  the  fruits  of  to-day 
with  the  roots  of  a  long  ago. 

The  United  States  has  nearly  twice  as 
many  English-speaking  people  as  has  the 
whole  British  Empire.  All  these  people,  so 
far  as  political  institutions  are  concerned, 
are  in  practically  the  same  stage  of  pohtical 
evolution.     All  the  state  legislatures  have 


150      THE  UNITED  STATES 

substantially  the  same  powers  and  all  the 
states  share  in  the  same  manner  in  the  fed- 
eral government.  The  American  Common- 
wealth is  the  greatest  community  the  world 
has  ever  seen  with  a  uniform  type  of  repre- 
sentative government  over  its  whole  vast 
area.  Strikingly  different  is  the  government 
of  the  British  Commonwealth.  Even  its 
sixty-five  miUions  of  peoples  of  European 
origin  have  an  almost  capricious  variety  of 
systems.  Great  Britain,  even  half  a  century 
ago,  was  governed  by  the  nobihty  and  the 
upper  middle  class.  It  was  with  dismay  that 
Queen  Victoria  saw  the  late  Joseph  Cham- 
berlain, a  manufacturer  and  a  supposedly 
extreme  radical,  take  high  office.  Soon  work- 
ing men,  who  had  labored  with  their  hands, 
became  Cabinet  ministers,  and  now  the  prime 
minister  himself  is  from  this  social  class.  The 
House  of  Commons  has  gained  final  mastery 
over  the  House  of  Lords,  which  now  can  de- 
lay, but  cannot  permanently  defeat,  measures 
not  to  its  taste.  Democracy  is  in  the  saddle 
in  Great  Britain,  but  the  old  forms  are  un- 
changed. There  is  a  king;  there  are  peers 
and  commoners;  men  still  pursue  eagerly 


AND  CANADA  151 

hereditary  titles  of  honor ;  but  the  vitality  has 
gone  out  of  conservative  reaction  and  the 
masses  control  the  government.  It  is  a  far 
cry  from  the  Whig  Lord  Palmerston  of  the 
sixties  to  the  Lloyd  George  of  to-day. 

In  other  parts  of  the  British  Common- 
wealth the  logic  of  environment  has  produced 
other  types  of  constitutions.  England  re- 
mains immovable  in  that  omnicompetence  of 
Parliament  which  keeps  all  legislative  power 
for  Great  Britain  at  Westminster.  But  for 
British  states  differently  situated  this  sys- 
tem has  proved  inadequate.  In  1867  Can- 
ada turned  to  federalism.  When,  more  than 
thirty  years  later,  in  1900,  Australia,  after 
long  hesitation,  adopted  federahsm,  it  was  a 
federalism  more  closely  akin  to  that  of  the 
United  States  than  is  the  Canadian  system. 
Australia  took  power  to  change  its  own  con- 
stitution, something  which,  in  form,  Canada 
has  not  yet  done.  Ten  years  later  South 
Africa,  in  a  different  situation,  adopted  for 
its  four  states  a  type  of  political  union  which 
was  less  a  federation  than  a  unitary  state 
with  subordinate  legislatures  of  very  limited 
authority.    New  Zealand  has  a  single  legis- 


152      THE  UNITED  STATES 

lature;  and  now  India,  clamoring  for  self- 
government,  is  given  a  system  which  is  half 
federal  in  that  it  divides  authority,  but  in  re- 
spect to  the  executive  power  is  not  greatly 
unlike  that  of  Canada  sixty  years  ago.  The 
variety  of  systems  in  the  British  Common- 
wealth is  accompanied  by  what  is  unknown 
in  the  United  States — a  variety  of  official 
languages.  Federal  Canada  uses  indiffer- 
ently French  or  English  in  public  affairs. 
South  Africa  uses  indifferently  Dutch  or 
English. 

There  is  no  serious  movement  to  create  a 
federal  union  of  all  the  self-governing  states 
of  the  Commonwealth.  The  war  has  fos- 
tered an  acute  nationalism  in  Canada.  For 
the  moment,  at  least,  there  is  no  prospect  of 
securing  Canada's  assent  to  any  form  of  cen- 
tralization which,  in  the  slightest  degree,  im- 
pairs her  own  sovereignty.  There  exists, 
however,  the  machinery  for  consultation  and 
cooperation.  The  absence  of  any  real  central 
authority  has  made  the  more  necessary  some 
means  for  discussing  matters  of  policy  which 
affect  the  British  Commonwealth  as  a  whole. 
In  response  to  this  need  there  met  in  1887 


AND  CANADA  153 

the  first  Conference,  called  then  the  Colonial 
Conference,  but  now  significantly  renamed 
the  Imperial  Conference.  Since  that  date 
in  every  fourth  year,  at  least,  have  come 
together  representatives  of  all  the  British  peo- 
ples to  take  counsel.  The  body  has  no  man- 
datory authority;  it  is  in  very  truth  a  Con- 
ference only ;  but  it  discusses  great  problems 
and  it  has  reached  agreements  and  helped  to 
mold  the  public  opinion  of  all  the  British 
states.  It  gives  at  least  opportunity  to  the 
leaders  to  come  together,  and  to  learn  to  un- 
derstand each  other.  One  can  only  record  a 
melancholy  regret  that  in  1776  no  such  Con- 
ference had  been  created.  If  at  that  time  the 
leaders  of  all  the  British  states  had  been  able 
to  sit  quietly  round  a  table  to  discuss  their 
differences,  the  story  of  the  world  might 
have  had  some  happier  pages. 


154      THE  UNITED  STATES 


LECTURE  VI 

THE  FUTURE 

In  the  stress  of  a  great  conflict  it  gives 
men  pleasure  to  picture  the  days  of  peace 
when  they  may  rest  from  their  labors.  It 
is  a  paradox  of  life  that  idealism  flourishes 
most  in  times  which  are  farthest  from  the 
ideal.  Amid  the  horrors  of  war  we  picture 
with  intense  hope  the  joys  of  peace.  Thus 
it  happened  that  during  the  Great  War  we 
dreamed  and  hoped  and,  in  many  cases,  be- 
lieved in  a  new  era  which  should  come  with 
victory.  This  idealism  was  sincere,  and  it  is 
only  a  shallow  view  to  suppose  that  it  has 
failed.  But  now  the  strain  of  war  is  re- 
moved ;  the  dirt,  the  brutality,  the  coarse  ob- 
scenity are  no  longer  in  evidence ;  and  we  are 
not  compelled  in  our  misery  to  turn  for  com- 
fort to  the  ideal.  Perhaps  it  was  thought 
that  the  new  era  would  come  more  easily  than 
could  be  possible.  But,  until  hope  becomes 
a  vice  and  is  no  longer  a  virtue,  no  wise  per- 


AND  CANADA  155 

son  will  sneer  at  the  conviction  that  out  of  a 
world  struggle  must  come  a  world  awaken- 
ing to  better  ideals  of  well-being.  The  task 
is  difficult,  and  when  we  confront  it  we  may 
ponder  the  solemn  words  of  Milton:  "To 
guide  .  .  .  mighty  states  by  counsel,  to  con- 
duct them  from  institutions  of  error  to  a 
worthier  discipline,  to  extend  a  provident 
care  to  furthest  shores,  to  watch,  to  fore- 
see, to  shrink  from  no  toil,  to  flee  all  the 
empty  shows  of  opulence  and  power — these, 
indeed,  are  things  so  arduous  that,  compared 
with  them,  war  is  but  as  the  play  of  children." 
The  idealism  of  a  time  of  war  has  a  cause 
simple  enough.  Men  are  united  in  a  com- 
mon purpose.  If  in  the  colossal  strength  of 
their  union  they  can  conquer  the  problems 
of  war,  they  feel  that  they  can  face  with  ease 
the  safer  problems  of  peace.  On  these  prob- 
lems, however,  there  is  not  the  samje  unity  of 
conviction.  Society  is  so  organized  that  each 
class  considers  its  safety  to  depend  upon 
alert  regard  for  its  own  interests.  The 
wage-earner  tries  to  get  the  most  from  the 
employer,  and  the  employer  in  turn  fears 
ruin  if  he  yields  too  much  to  the  wage-earner. 


156       THE  UNITED  STATES 

Thus  the  idealism  of  a  period  of  war  is  apt  to 
end  with  the  war  itself,  and  with  peace  comes 
a  reversion  to  rival  aims  and  rival  interests. 
It  is  all  a  part  of  the  drama  of  man's  life; 
but  because  this  happens  the  pessimist  must 
not  imagine  that  he  has  gained  an  easy  vic- 
tory. War  seems  to  change  even  the  fiber  of 
men's  minds ;  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  late 
war,  at  least,  has  shattered  a  mass  of  con- 
victions which  men  accepted  as  ultimate  with- 
out reasoning  on  their  origins.  In  effect, 
if  not  in  form,  some  political  parties  have 
disappeared  and  all  have  been  shaken.  A 
good  many  people  blush  to  think  that  they 
once  accepted  shibboleths  which  now  they 
see  to  have  had  no  meaning.  The  pessimist 
sees  in  this  the  dissolution  of  human  society. 
No  doubt  it  is  a  serious  thing  for  the  con- 
ventions which  men  have  obeyed  suddenly 
to  break  down.  But,  if  we  have  an  ultimate 
faith  in  man,  we  will  beheve  that  the  break- 
down means  the  liberation  of  his  mind  from 
what  was  dead  and  oppressive,  and  that  he 
has  the  vitality  to  reorganize  his  effort  on 
better  lines.  Out  of  the  debris  of  the  old 
system  will  come  slowly,  and  no  doubt  with 


AND  CANADA  157 

the  pain  and  sorrow  which  accompany  all 
of  man's  achievement,  something  which  to 
vital  insight  will  seem  to  justify  his  sac- 
rifices. 

Unless  we  can  face  the  future  in  this  spirit 
there  is  not  much  in  the  political  outlook  at 
the  present  time  to  cheer  the  heart.  Europe 
is  still  [April,  1920]  the  scene  of  the  horrors 
of  war,  and  America  is  not  at  peace  with  it- 
self. On  every  side  are  unrest  and  suspi- 
cion. Whole  peoples  are  suffering  as  they 
have  never  suffered  before.  Every  effort 
of  devilish  ingenuity  is  being  made  to  embroil 
the  two  great  English-speaking  nations. 
Perhaps  humanity  has  learned  by  this  time 
that  the  good  triumphs  only  after  evil  has 
done  its  worst;  and  it  may  be  that  the  very 
intensity  of  the  efforts  to  create  bitterness  of 
feeling  is  proof  that  the  dawn  of  a  better 
day  is  near.  At  any  rate  we  may  regretfully 
admit  that  the  task  of  shaping  the  relations 
of  nations  to  make  war  impossible  is  so  stern 
and  difficult  that  compared  with  it  the  prob- 
lems of  war  itself  are  "but  as  the  play  of 
children." 

The  two  English-speaking  federations  in 


158       THE  UNITED  STATES 

North  America  became  in  the  end  partners 
in  the  Great  War.  There  was  a  difference. 
From  the  first  day  Canada  was  clear  in  its 
resolve  not  to  stand  aloof,  while  only  slowly 
and  with  reluctance  did  the  American  people 
see  that  they  too  must  join  in  this  struggle 
which  had  begun  between  nations  in  Europe. 
The  difference  has  its  roots  deep  in  history. 
The  American  federation,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  founded  in  the  conviction  that  the  repub- 
lic was  to  give  to  the  world  a  new  note  in 
political  life,  and  that  one  chief  condition  of 
success  would  be  to  keep  aloof  from  entangle- 
ment in  the  worn-out  politics  of  Europe. 
What  wonder  that,  when  this  tradition  had 
been  fixed  for  a  century  and  a  quarter,  and 
when  suddenly  Europe  burst  into  the  flames 
of  a  mighty  conflagration,  there  should  be 
careful  scrutiny  of  the  issue  in  the  United 
States.  At  the  outburst  of  the  war  in  191 4 
I  happened  to  be  living  in  a  watering-place 
where  about  half  of  the  people  were  Ameri- 
cans and  half  of  them  Canadians.  All  felt 
that  Germany  had  provoked  the  war  and 
condemned  her  action.  "You  must  remem- 
ber, however,  that  this  is  a  European  war. 


AND  CANADA  159 

and  that  we  are  not  in  it,"  said  a  young 
American  scholar  to  me.  The  attitude  of 
the  young  Canadian  was  in  sharp  contrast. 
He  had  never  been  taught  any  tradition  of 
holding  aloof  from  entanglements  in  Eu- 
rope. His  fear  during  the  tremulous  days 
just  before  the  4th  of  August,  1914,  was 
that  Britain  might  hold  aloof.  If  she  did, 
he  even  thought  that  Canada  ought  to  de- 
clare war  against  Germany  on  her  own  ac- 
count and  do  her  part,  whether  England  did 
or  did  not  share  in  the  effort  to  save  liberty 
in  the  world. 

It  may  be  that  in  this  contrasted  attitude 
of  mind  we  find  one  of  the  chief  differences 
in  the  spirit  of  the  two  federations.  Of  all 
Europe,  not  excluding  France,  her  own  ally 
in  the  Revolution,  the  United  States  is  sus- 
picious. She  has  made  her  territory  the 
refuge  of  the  oppressed,  and  the  multitudes 
who  have  flocked  to  her  shores  from  Europe 
to  find  liberty  have  strengthened  rather  than 
weakened  her  conception  of  the  dangers  from 
Eiu-opean  intrigues.  Canada,  on  the  other 
hand,  has  preserved  a  close  tie  with  a  Eu- 
ropean state,  and  has  had  a  child-like  belief 


160      THE  UNITED  STATES 

in  this  state  as  playing  a  magnanimous  role 
in  world  politics.  If,  in  wide  circles  in  the 
United  States,  everything  which  England 
proposes  or  does  is  to  be  scanned  with  a 
suspicious  eye,  in  Canada  the  presumption 
is  that  the  politics  of  Britain  are  the  purest, 
her  system  the  most  wisely  democratic,  and 
her  statesmen  the  best  trained  and  the  most 
high-minded  of  any  in  the  world.  When  the 
Canadian  constitution  was  framed,  all  par- 
ties were  unanimous  in  trusting  the  tribunal 
known  as  the  Privy  Council,  which  sits  in 
London,  to  say  the  final  word  when  any  dis- 
putes should  arise  as  to  the  interpretation 
of  the  constitution.  To  this  day  Canadian 
lawyers  cling  to  the  right  of  ultimate  appeal 
to  this  tribunal  as  a  guarantee  that  the  best 
judgments  will  be  given  which  human  wis- 
dom can  achieve.  Thus  it  happened  that 
when  Britain  was  involved  in  the  war  there 
was  not  a  moment's  hesitation  in  Canada. 
For  what  was  at  stake  she  was  ready  to 
pledge  her  all,  and  did  in  the  end  pledge  it. 
In  this  she  was  not  unique.  Australia  and 
New  Zealand  made  sacrifices  as  great  and 
the  whole  British  Commonwealth  was  united 


AND  CANADA  161 

in  measure   not   thought,   even   by   astute 
statesmen,  to  be  possible. 

Paradox  lingers  on  the  path  of  all  our 
efforts,  and  it  is  certainly  true  that  out  of 
this  unity  has  come  a  new  emphasis  upon 
the  right,  and,  indeed,  the  need,  of  each  of 
the  nations  in  the  Commonwealth  to  live  its 
own  distinct  national  hfe.  The  paradox  is 
less  striking  than  it  seems.  No  compulsion 
could  have  produced  the  unity.  It  was  rather 
the  expression  of  free  individuality,  a  con- 
sensus based  upon  both  natural  instinct  and 
political  reflection.  The  strain  of  the  great 
effort  brought  to  each  unit  a  vital  self -con- 
sciousness. Each  was  free  to  do  what  it 
chose;  each  felt  that  the  race  for  victory 
could  be  won  only  by  the  trained  use  of 
every  muscle ;  each  felt  that  it  was  in  honor- 
able competition  with  the  others.  It  was 
with  a  thrill  of  pride  that  AustraHa  and 
Canada  found  that  their  sons  ranked  with 
the  best  in  the  intricate  achievements  of  war. 
This  experience  quickened  the  growth  of  na- 
tionahsm,  and  it  took  unexpected  forms.  At 
an  earher  time  the  Canadian  Pacific  Rail- 
way, conceived  and  carried  through  by  men 


162       THE  UNITED  STATES 

whose  fortunes  and  interests  centered  in 
Canada,  had  been  an  achievement  which  de- 
manded recognition  and  the  recognition 
which  seemed  most  appropriate  was  to  make 
three  of  its  leading  architects  members  of  the 
British  House  of  Lords.  In  the  early  stages 
of  the  war  this  recognition  of  Canada's  ef- 
fort by  British  titles  of  honor  was  accepted. 
Then  there  came  a  sudden  outburst  against 
it.  People  began  to  say  that  titles  of  honor, 
and  especially  hereditary  titles  of  honor, 
which  might  be  in  place  in  an  old  civili- 
zation, were  out  of  place  in  Canada,  and  the 
Canadian  Parliament  put  an  end  to  the 
practice. 

It  has  not  been  easy  for  other  nations  to 
follow  this  growth  of  national  life  within  the 
British  Commonwealth.  The  United  States 
had  long  since  recognized  the  principle  that 
the  British  Empire  was  in  a  fiscal  sense  a 
single  state  which  might  give  what  trade 
preferences  it  liked  among  its  own  members 
without  raising  any  question  of  the  rights 
of  other  countries  to  the  treatment  of  the 
most  favored  nation.  In  this  sense  there  was 
to  the  United  States  but  one  British  nation. 


AND  CANADA  163 

In  the  law  of  belligerency  there  was  also 
one.  When  Great  Britain  was  at  war,  Can- 
ada too  was  at  war.  It  was  therefore  puz- 
zling to  find  Canada  claiming  definite  na- 
tional status  and  the  right  to  speak  for  her- 
self at  foreign  capitals,  and  the  puzzle  was 
increased  as  soon  as  the  problems  of  the  pro- 
posed League  of  Nations  came  under  close 
scrutiny.  When  the  Treaty  of  Peace  was 
signed  at  Versailles,  in  1919,  the  representa- 
tives of  Canada,  Australia,  and  other  Do- 
minions signed  it,  and  in  doing  so  became  in 
their  own  right  members  of  the  League  of 
Nations.  Thus,  as  parties  to  the  peace,  the 
British  Commonwealth  became  not  one  but 
six  nations.  Yet,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  view 
of  the  United  States,  and  for  the  advantage 
not  of  the  United  States  but  of  the  British 
Commonwealth,  it  was  regarded  fiscally  as 
a  single  state.  It  was  one,  too,  when  a  ques- 
tion of  war  arose.  Now,  in  the  League  of 
Nations  it  became  six.  On  the  surface  polit- 
ical paradox  could  no  further  go. 

The  League  of  Nations  has  become  a  vex- 
ing problem  in  politics,  and  this  is  not  the 
place  to  take  sides  on  a  great  issue.    If  one 


164       THE  UNITED  STATES 

may  summarize  what  the  League  aims  at, 
it  may  be  covered  mider  four  chief  points : 

1.  Publicity  of  treaties  between  states,  so 
as  to  end  secret  obligations  which  may  be- 
come a  menace  to  the  security  of  other  states. 

2.  The  creation  of  an  international  court 
to  give  judgment  in  cases  of  disputes  be- 
tween nations,  and  thus  prevent  recourse 
to  war. 

3.  Provision  for  the  reduction  of  arma- 
ments by  consent  of  the  nation  or  nations 
concerned,  and  guarantees  for  the  perma- 
nence of  the  scale  of  armaments  agreed  upon. 

4.  The  ending  of  the  system  of  exploiting 
weak  states  by  strong  ones,  and  the  putting 
of  weak  states  under  the  ultimate  guardian- 
ship of  the  League  of  Nations,  with  author- 
ity to  give  mandates  to  nations  selected  for 
the  pui'pose  to  act  as  guardians  of  the  weaker 
states,  and  under  obligation  to  give  account 
to  the  League  of  Nations  for  the  discharge 
of  the  responsibility  assumed. 

When  the  opportunity  to  join  the  League 
of  Nations  came,  Canada  entered  the  League 
gladly  and  proudly.  The  United  States, 
however,  speaking  through  the  Senate,  held 


AND  CANADA  165 

back.  Once  more  was  there  in  evidence  the 
contrast  in  tradition  of  the  two  federations, 
the  United  States  dreading  entanglements 
in  Europe,  Canada  feeling  herself  as  much 
a  European  as  an  American  state,  and  ready 
to  follow  where  Britain  led.  A  nation  which 
feels  that  it  has  made  a  special  place  for 
itself  in  the  world  and  has  based  its  institu- 
tions on  a  new  application  of  political  theory 
naturally  looks  with  a  critical  eye  on  propo- 
sals for  adopting  a  common  policy  with  other 
states.  The  outside  world  wondered  that 
during  the  war  the  United  States  never 
spoke  of  "aUies,"  but  always  of  "associated 
powers,"  for  the  good  reason  that  she  made 
no  treaty  of  alliance  with  the  other  bellig- 
erents hke  that  between  France  and  Britain, 
There  was  working  the  thought  that  com- 
plete identity  of  aim  was  not  possible  be- 
tween an  idealist  republic  and  the  war-worn 
states  of  Europe.  Objection  to  joining  the 
League  of  Nations  thus  fitted  in  with  a  vivid 
tradition.  The  United  States  must  do  noth- 
ing to  guarantee  political  frontiers  in  Eu- 
rope and  thus  embroil  itself  there;  it  must 
maintain  its  authority  in  respect  to  America, 


166       THE  UNITED  STATES 

and  not  permit  non- American  nations  to  take 
part  in  directing  policy  which  might  conflict 
with  the  principles  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine ; 
it  must  maintain  the  right  to  use  its  own 
judgment  as  to  withdrawal  from  any 
League ;  above  all,  it  must  not  put  itself  in  a 
position  of  relative  inferiority  to  any  other 
great  power.  Six  votes  for  the  British  Em- 
pire with  only  one  for  the  United  States 
seemed  to  indicate  inferior  status.  So  rea- 
soned American  idealism,  and  for  the  mo- 
ment the  United  States  remained  out  of  the 
League. 

The  Canadian  federation  had  its  own 
ideahsm  working  to  an  opposite  conclusion. 
The  political  movement,  which  we  know  as 
the  American  Revolution,  was  at  first  only 
a  domestic  protest  in  a  matter  of  constitu- 
tional right.  When,  however,  the  issue  was 
once  confronted,  American  thought  took  a 
wider  range  and  confronted  an  ultimate 
problem  of  human  liberty.  A  year  of  strug- 
gle convinced  Washington  and  his  comrades 
in  arms  that  they  must  break  with  a  treas- 
ured past,  and  declare  for  British  citizens 
in  America  complete  independence  of  the 


AND  CANADA  167 

motherland.  The  reluctance  with  which  the 
step  was  taken  is  very  marked — as  marked 
as  that  with  which  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
turned  from  their  dear  England  to  make  new 
homes  in  a  rough  and  unknown  continent. 
The  tragedy  of  the  American  Revolutionary 
War  demonstrated  the  truth  that  it  is  a  vio- 
lation of  a  law  of  nature  for  a  people  to  try 
to  hold  in  a  position  of  subordination  com- 
munities of  similar  origin  but  of  more  recent 
foundation.  The  old  have  always  thought 
that  they  could  speak  words  of  guiding  wis- 
dom to  the  young,  but  the  young  have  sooner 
or  later  retorted  that  their  manhood  required 
them  to  think  for  themselves.  The  problem 
which  Canada,  the  second  in  importance  of 
the  Enghsh-sp caking  states  overseas,  has  had 
to  solve  has  been  not  less  vital  than  that  of 
the  American  Revolution.  Could  Canada 
remain  a  state  of  the  British  Commonwealth 
and  yet  attain  national  manhood  on  the  basis 
of  complete  political  equality  with  Great 
Britain? 

When  the  time  came  for  making  peace, 
Canada  demanded  recognition  as  a  distinct 
nation,  but  a  nation  within  the  complex  Brit- 


168       THE  UNITED  STATES 

ish  Commonwealth.  The  demand  was  ac- 
ceded to  at  Versailles.  Possibly  when  M. 
Clemenceau  so  readily  accepted  it  he  had  in 
his  mind  the  thought  that  it  really  did  not 
matter,  since  in  ultimate  constitutional  fact 
the  British  Commonwealth  was  one  in  re- 
spect to  the  issues  of  war  and  peace,  and  sep- 
arate signature  of  the  Treaty  by  Canada 
would  serve  only  to  reenforce  an  obligation 
which  the  single  signature  by  Great  Britain 
already  created.  But  Canada  valued  the 
point.  It  involved  the  recognition  by  the 
whole  world  of  a  political  principle  which 
the  leaders  of  the  American  Revolution  had 
believed  incredible,  that  within  a  single  state 
imder  a  single  sovereign  there  could  be  dis- 
tinct nations,  no  one  of  them  subordinate  to 
any  of  the  others,  and  yet  hnked  together 
by  ties  firm  enough  to  be  strengthened,  and 
not  weakened,  during  the  hard  testing  and 
sacrifices  of  war.  The  observer  might  well 
smile  when  he  saw  the  United  States  so  cau- 
tious and  reserved  in  regard  to  assuming  the 
obhgations  of  the  League  of  Nations  and 
Canada  so  eager  to  accept  them.  But  there 
was  a  reason.    The  United  States,  as  a  re- 


AND  CANADA  169 

suit  of  a  revolution,  had  an  assured  status 
before  the  world.  Canada,  long  regarded  as 
a  colony  of  Great  Britain,  had  no  such  status 
as  a  nation.  For  this  status  she  was  wilhng 
to  pay  the  price  by  assuming  responsibihties 
as  a  member  of  the  League  of  Nations. 

Now,  with  the  war  over,  the  English- 
speaking  peoples  must  face  the  whole  ques- 
tion of  world-order.  The  war  was  a  war  of 
principles.  It  is  not  manly  to  hurl  re- 
proaches at  a  defeated  opponent,  and  this  is 
not  the  time  to  pile  up  an  indictment  of  Ger- 
many. History  has  given  and  will  maintain 
its  stern  verdict.  During  many  years  Ger- 
many steadily  refused  to  join  in  the  move- 
ment to  lessen  by  arbitration  treaties  the  dan- 
ger of  war.  The  nations  of  the  world  re- 
quired, she  believed,  leadership  and,  if  need 
be,  control  from  the  strong  and  efficient. 
This  she  thought  herself  to  be  in  a  sense 
true  of  no  other  nation.  Germany  alone, 
as  Fichte  said  early  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, had  been  intrusted  with  "the  seeds  of 
human  perfection,"  and  if  Germany  should 
fail,  himianity  would  succumb.  Thus  not 
brotherhood,  but  mastery,  was  Germany's 


170      THE  UNITED  STATES 

duty,  and  every  step  needed  to  secure  mas- 
tery was  justified.  "Our  troops  must 
achieve  victory.  What  else  matters?"  said 
a  certain  General  von  Disfiirth,  and  he 
added  that  Germany  owed  explanations  to 
no  one  for  Louvain  and  Reims:  "There  is 
nothing  for  us  to  justify  and  nothing  for  us 
to  explain  away."  Germany  was  to  rule  the 
world  for  the  world's  good,  and,  since  the 
end  was  noble,  all  means  to  secure  the  end 
were  permissible.  Even  the  German  sword 
had  its  hymn:  "Day  after  day  I  ride  aloft 
on  the  shadowy  horse  in  the  valley  of  cy- 
presses, and  as  I  ride  I  draw  forth  the  life- 
blood  from  every  enemy's  son  that  dares  to 
dispute  my  path.  .  .  .  Am  I  not  the  flaming 
messenger  of  the  Almighty?" 

The  alternative  to  the  German  concep- 
tion is  to  consider  mankind  a  brotherhood,  a 
family  of  potential  equals,  in  which  the 
strong  will  help  and  encourage  the  weak 
and  try  to  raise  them  to  the  level  of  the  high- 
est. It  is  no  doubt  true  that  the  greater 
part  of  man's  record  tells  a  story  far  other 
than  this — a  story  of  the  robbery,  the  en- 
forced servitude  of  the  weak  by  the  strong. 


AND  CANADA  171 

Only  a  bold  nation  could  plead  "not  guilty" 
to  the  charge  of  having  played  some  part 
in  this  melancholy  aspect  of  the  human 
drama,  and  the  culmination  was  a  world  war 
in  which  perished  something  hke  ten  million 
human  beings.  During  the  agony  of  this 
struggle  men  asked  themselves  whether  this 
must  always  be  so,  and  the  heart  of  mankind 
said  "No!"  White  men  and  brown  men  and 
yellow  men  and  black  men  all  gave  the  same 
aspiring  answer.  No  one  of  them  was  will- 
ing to  be  under  the  heel  of  the  other;  all, 
as  the  world  unrest  of  to-day  shows,  had  as- 
pirations to  be  free  and  independent.  There 
could  be  no  one  great  and  strong  state  doni- 
inating  all  the  others  for  their  good.  Differ- 
ent types  of  men  must  evolve  differing  types 
of  state.  They  would  have  misunderstand- 
ings and  rivalries.  Always  would  there  be 
the  danger  of  armed  strife,  and  to  prevent 
a  renewed  and  even  greater  catastrophe 
some  means  must  be  devised  of  making  not 
Force  but  Justice  respected  and  obeyed. 
And  this  was  the  call  for  a  League  of 
Nations. 

The  subject  lends  itself,  without  doubt, 


172       THE  UNITED  STATES 

to  the  platitudes  and  perorations  of  easy- 
going optimism.  In  eras  of  upheaval  men 
have  loved  to  dwell  upon  vague  theories  of 
abstract  right,  and  the  exhortation  of  Mira- 
beau  has  always  some  pertinence,  that  if 
heed  is  given  to  Duties,  Rights  will  take  care 
of  themselves.  In  all  idealism  there  is  the 
perennial  danger  of  mere  pedantry.  Some 
who  talk  of  the  rights  of  a  people  to  self- 
determination  seem  to  imply  that  every  peo- 
ple has  the  capacity  to  devise  and  conduct  a 
government,  which  is  not  true.  Perhaps 
Mirabeau  was  right  when  he  told  the 
French  National  Assembly  to  think  only 
of  duties.  Rights  are  privileges.  Duties 
relate  to  responsibility.  More  and  more 
does  the  modern  state  within  its  own  border 
organize  effort  to  protect  the  helpless  and 
restrain  the  strong  who  seek  to  do  evil.  In 
a  civihzed  society  no  one  is  allowed  to  take 
the  law  into  his  own  hands,  and  the  decent 
people  unite  to  support  the  forces  of  order. 
Churches  and  individuals  make  great  sacri- 
fices in  order  to  uplift  remote  peoples  by 
missionary  effort.  It  is  not  too  much  to 
hope  that  such  labor  can  be  carried  beyond 


AND  CANADA  173 

private  effort,  and  that  nations  will  unite  in 
sacrifices  to  make  the  world  a  decent  place 
in  which  to  live. 

Careless  optimism  has  proved  baneful  in 
the  past  and  may  easily  do  so  again.  A 
great  empire  has  been  laid  in  the  dust,  and 
yet  its  sixty  million  people  are  not  wholly 
crushed.  From  it  have  been  taken  not 
merely  Alsace-Lorraine  in  the  West,  now 
protected  by  the  powerful  arm  of  France, 
but  Polish  provinces  in  the  east,  with  no 
protector  but  the  newly  organized  republic 
of  Poland,  which  has  hardly  yet  escaped 
from  the  disorder  and  incompetence  due  to 
a  tragic  past.  Germany  looks  upon  these 
Slav  peoples  as  "a  malleable  medley  of  in- 
competents," and  feels  in  regard  to  her  lost 
PoHsh  provinces  what  the  United  States 
would  feel  if  by  some  stroke  of  ill-fortune 
Mexico  should  recover  control  of  Texas. 
That  Germany  accepts  her  loss  as  final  is 
hardly  conceivable.  She  has  a  vast  popula- 
tion which,  however  disunited  in  respect  to 
forms  of  government,  is  united  in  feeling 
contempt  for  the  Pole,  and  in  a  resolve  to 
leave  no  German  population  under  his  dom- 


174       THE  UNITED  STATES 

ination.  In  seeing  that  this  is  true  we  need 
not  read  into  the  German  mind  any  sinister 
desire  to  revive  the  old  dream  of  world- 
power.  That  ambition  is  gone,  probably  for- 
ever. But  there  remains,  even  if  we  look  no 
farther  than  the  borders  of  the  old  Germany, 
enough  of  bitter  race  hatreds  and  rivalries 
to  make  armed  strife  at  any  time  possible, 
and  such  a  fire  is  likely  to  spread.  What  is 
the  use  of  trying  to  reconstruct  a  shattered 
civilization  if  it  is  only  again  to  be  menaced 
steadily  by  the  same  old  destructive  forces, 
unchecked  and  unrestrained?  The  task 
would  be  too  disheartening.  Hope  and 
courage  need  some  new  note  to  cheer  them 
on.  And  the  note  that  has  in  it  vital  prom- 
ise is  found  in  the  unity  of  aim  and  in  the 
cooperation  of  the  two  English-speaking 
peoples. 

At  this  moment  these  two  peoples  are  the 
strongest  force  ever  known  in  human  his- 
tory. In  natural  resources  they  surpass  any 
measure  which  can  have  been  imagined  in 
earher  ages.  They  have  coal  and  iron,  gold 
and  silver,  timber  and  rich  agricultural  lands, 
and  climatic  conditions  the  most  suitable  for 


AND  CANADA  175 

human  effort.  They  have  the  power  to  say 
of  evil  forces  working  in  international  af- 
fairs that  they  shall  not  prevail,  power  to 
hold  malignancy  in  check,  power  to  restrain 
ignoble  greed  among  the  nations  for  terri- 
tory and  plunder.  It  is  true  of  each  of  the 
two  great  EngHsh-speaking  states  that  they 
ihave  no  unachieved  ambitions  to  make  them 
/discontented  and  restless  in  respect  to  things 
as  they  now  stand  in  the  world.  Germany 
was  conscious  of  power  within  herself;  she 
felt  that  the  acknowledged  scene  of  her  dom- 
inance was  not  adequate  to  her  capacity ;  and 
she  waged  war  in  order  to  enlarge  her  bor- 
ders. There  is  no  temptation  for  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples  to  attempt  anything 
of  the  kind.  They  will  not  give  up  what  the 
fortune  of  history  has  brought  to  them ;  but 
they  desire  nothing  that  anyone  else  holds. 
Neither  of  them  has  any  ambitions  which 
menace  the  other.  They  speak  the  same  lan- 
guage and  can  understand  each  other's 
thoughts.  They  are  both  great  trading  and 
industrial  nations.  Both  know  perfectly 
well  that  peace  is  their  highest  interest.  If 
they  stand  together  for  human  well-being, 


176      THE  UNITED  STATES 

they  can  at  least  make  the  world  safe  from 
the  menace  of  great  wars. 

The  world  has  had  many  experiences  of 
plans  to  avert  war,  and  we  shall  not  be  wise 
to  think  that  after  so  many  failures  a  final 
remedy  is  to  be  found.  In  the  Middle  Ages 
the  Pope,  the  universal  spiritual  father,  was 
to  be  the  tribunal  to  which  his  beheving  chil- 
dren were  to  bring  disputes  for  settlement, 
without  wars.  Yet  war  continued  to  flour- 
ish. It  flourished  with  even  deadher  perti- 
nacity when  some  nations  broke  away  from 
the  papacy  and  the  terrible  wars  of  religion 
followed.  Dynastic  wars  came  in  the  wake 
of  religious  wars.  Then  in  a  revolutionary 
age  old  dynasties  broke  down,  and  a  Napo- 
leon offered  peace  to  the  world  on  the  basis 
of  his  own  power  as  a  soldier  to  hold  all 
others  in  check.  Napoleon  fell,  and  a  holy 
alliance  of  Em*opean  rulers,  who  should  act 
toward  each  other  as  Christian  brothers, 
seemed  to  furnish  the  best  promise  of  endur- 
ing peace.  And  a  hundred  years  after  the 
creation  of  this  cure  for  the  ills  of  nations 
came  a  World  War,  with  destruction  and 
horror  on  a  scale  surpassing  anything  in  the 


AND  CANADA  177 

previous  history  of  mankind.  It  is  not  an 
inspiring  record,  but  it  has  its  conspicuous 
moral — ^that  no  tribunal,  no  mechanism  of 
procedure,  will  save  the  world  from  war. 
Only  the  friendly  spirit,  the  belief  of  whole 
peoples  in  each  other's  integrity,  will  create 
the  conditions  which  will  insure  peace. 

If  the  Enghsh-speaking  peoples  cannot 
learn  this  mutual  confidence,  we  may  indeed 
sorrow  for  the  future  of  mankind.  The  out- 
look of  a  people  is  molded  to  an  extent  great, 
but  not  capable  of  analysis,  by  its  traditional 
modes  of  thought,  by  the  attitude  toward 
life  of  its  classic  writers,  by  clearly  defined 
and  explicit  standards  handed  on  from  one 
generation  to  another.  The  Puritanism  of 
England  of  the  age  of  Cromwell  passed  into 
the  fiber  of  the  New  England  which  sprang 
from  it,  and  to  this  day  it  shapes  the  moral 
standards  of  millions  of  Americans  who 
know  not  from  what  source  has  come  the 
fashioning  of  their  beliefs.  The  devout  Cath- 
olic acquires  from  the  long  past  of  a  Rome 
of  which  he  may  know  nothing  the  tradi- 
tional behefs  and  motives  which  touch  his 
dearest  hopes  and  affections.     Thus  is  it 


178      THE  UNITED  STATES 

that  tradition  makes  the  present  the  child 
of  the  past.  Peoples  with  differing  tradi- 
tions find  it  hard  to  understand  one  another. 
The  body  of  French  tradition  is  different 
from  that  of  Germany.  The  classic  leaders 
and  thinkers  of  one  country  are  not  those  of 
the  other,  and  it  is  not  easy  for  a  Frenchman 
and  a  German  to  attain  unity  of  outlook. 
Montaigne  may  have  molded  the  thought 
of  one,  Luther  that  of  the  other.  There  is 
above  all  the  barrier  of  language.  If  all 
Germany  spoke  French  or  all  France  spoke 
German,  we  should  probably  find  strange 
and  unexpected  results  in  the  attitude  of  the 
two  peoples  toward  each  other.  Friendh- 
ness  might  not  at  first  increase,  for  mem- 
bers of  the  same  family  often  quarrel  be- 
cause they  understand  each  other  so  com- 
pletely, but  each  country  would  know  the 
thoughts  of  the  other.  The  recent  war 
taught  the  world  that  the  German  language 
concealed  from  understanding  by  other  na- 
tions a  mentality  well-nigh  impervious  to  in- 
fluences from  without. 

In  the  light  of  such  facts  one  may  be  par- 
doned for  asking  again  what  hope  there  is 


AND  CANADA  179 

for  agreement  among  other  nations,  if  the 
two  English-speaking  nations  cannot  learn 
to  miderstand  each  other.  From  the  same 
source  came  their  most  precious  traditions, 
their  language,  their  hterature,  their  attitude 
toward  hfe.  They  are  creative  peoples. 
Wherever  they  go  they  bring  curiosity  and 
energy  to  bear  on  what  nature  offers  to 
man's  effort;  and  industry  and  commerce 
spring  up  from  this  turning  of  nature's  re- 
sources to  the  service  of  man.  Both  are  self- 
rehant  and  masterful,  but  the  masterfulness 
,  does  not  take  the  form  of  a  desire  to  enslave 
others.  It  is  the  masterfulness  of  equals  in 
free  competition.  Both  have  made  great 
sacrifices  to  abolish  the  institution  of  slavery, 
with  man  owning  man  as  property.  Free- 
dom of  speech,  diversity  of  religious  beliefs, 
but  complete  tolerance  for  all,  a  political 
system  based  on  appeals  to  the  judgment  of 
the  many — ^these  are  common  to  both  peo- 
ples. Both  have  profoundly  influenced  the 
poHtical  life  of  the  modern  world.  Eng- 
land has  played  in  history  the  role  of  creat- 
ing and  handing  on  to  others  representative 
institutions  now  accepted  in  every  continent ; 


180      THE  UNITED  STATES 

the  United  States  has  led  in  giving  votes  to 
the  many  and  in  forwarding  that  democ- 
racy, so  potent  for  good  if  wise  in  spirit,  so 
mahgnant  in  its  working  if  the  spirit  is  evil. 
We  are  tempted  not  less  in  domestic  than 
in  international  affairs  to  satisfy  ourselves 
with  creating  machinery,  without  taking  the 
needed  care  to  furnish  the  power  which  will 
make  the  machinery  perform  its  proper 
tasks.  In  politics  the  vital  thing  is  not  the 
form  but  the  spirit.  A  despotism,  indefensi- 
ble in  the  principles  which  it  embodies,  may 
yet,  if  inspired  by  sanity  and  wisdom,  effect 
beneficent  ends,  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  holy  alliance,  become  the  tool  of  design- 
ing selfishness,  may  lure  nations  on  to  irre- 
trievable disaster.  There  is  no  magic  which 
will  miake  a  League  of  Nations  or  a  democ- 
racy bring  about  good  rather  than  evil,  other 
than  the  magic  of  intelligent  and  high  resolve 
expressed  in  energetic  action.  The  noblest 
ideals  may  be  perverted  to  base  ends.  The 
militarist  ambitions  of  the  soldier  caste  in 
Germany  were  concealed  behind  some  of 
the  best  aspirations  of  a  poKtical  society. 
The  Germany  which  Bismarck  created  had 


AND  CANADA  181 

universal  suffrage,  so  that  every  man  seemed 
assured  of  political  rights;  it  had  a  costly 
and  efficient  system  of  state  education,  so 
that  no  one  need  be  ilHterate;  it  had  pen- 
sions for  old  age;  it  cared  for  the  indigent, 
and  boasted  that  in  its  crowded  centers 
there  were  decency  and  comfort  unknown 
in  the  slums  of  London  or  New  York.  Yet 
behind  these  good  things  lurked  the  spirit 
which  made  force  its  god  and  despotic  power 
its  end,  and  a  world  disaster  followed.  The 
German  who  read  deeply  enough  to  see 
what  all  this  really  meant  was  yet  impotent 
to  check  it,  for  he  was  confronted  by  a  pow- 
erful and  ruthless  hierarchy  which  brooked 
no  interference  with  its  aims. 

In  moments  of  gloom  we  are  tempted  to 
think  that  the  forces  of  evil  are  more  readily 
organized  than  those  of  good;  but  it  is  not 
really  so.  Since  evil  is  selfish  it  carries  with 
it  the  seeds  of  disintegration.  Any  system 
based  upon  the  denial  of  fundamental  hu- 
man right  is  weak.  Democracy  with  all  its 
faults  is  stronger  than  despotism.  Despot- 
ism means  the  power  of  one  over  the  many 
and  cannot  be  based  on  any  human  right. 


182       THE  UNITED  STATES 

while  democracy  asserts  the  right  on  the 
part  of  the  many  to  think  and  act  for  them- 
selves.   A  democratic  society,  however  drab 
and  commonplace  it  may  seem,  rests  never- 
theless on  a  sound  basis.    What  it  needs  is 
leadership   which   it   can   trust,   leadership 
which  will  appeal  to  the  fine  things  lurking 
in  man's  nature  and  not  to  the  evil  things 
also  lurking  there;  it  needs  direction  by  the 
best,  and  not  by  the  worst,  elements  in  our 
society.     Some  who  think  themselves  initi- 
ated and  in  touch  with  reality  will  shrug 
their  shoulders  and  say  that  the  thing  is  im- 
possible, that  there  is  no  room  in  politics 
as  now  organized  for  the  refined  and  the  edu- 
cated.  It  is  an  age-old  cynicism.   Su  T*ang 
Pu,  an  ancient  Chinese  poet,  expressed  it 
in  his  bitter  reflection  on  the  birth  of  a  son: 
"Families  when  a  child  is  born  want  it  to  be 
intelligent;  I,  through  intelligence,  having 
wrecked  my  whole  life,  only  hope  the  boy 
may  prove  ignorant  and  stupid ;  then  he  will 
crown  a  tranquil  life  by  becoming  a  Cabi- 
net minister."     But  the  cynicism  does  not 
express  truth.     The  man  who  made  the 
greatest  personal  impress  on  his  generation. 


AND  CANADA  183 

Theodore  Roosevelt,  came  out  of  the  circle 
which  thought  it  degrading  for  a  gentleman 
to  face  the  rough-and-timible  of  politics.  I 
say  nothing  of  his  policies,  which  may  have 
been  right  or  mistaken,  but  he  made  himself 
felt  beyond  what  was  possible  to  a  man  of 
coarser  type.  Education,  intelligence,  and 
refinement,  if  linked  with  simplicity  of  char- 
acter, are  assets,  and  not  handicaps,  in  the 
leadership  of  the  masses.  England  has  one 
lesson  to  teach  which  other  democratic  soci- 
eties have  not  yet  learned — that  the  best  and 
ablest  in  a  nation's  life  can  find  in  its  poh- 
tics  the  widest  sphere  for  their  ambitions. 

John  Stuart  Mill  described  democracy  as 
"collective  mediocrity."  We  might  say  the 
same  of  an  army;  indeed,  of  mankind  as  a 
whole.  But  this  collective  mediocrity  fol- 
lowed an  inspired  Lincoln  in  civil  affairs; 
and  the  masses  in  France  followed  and  be- 
lieved in  the  greatest  military  genius  whom 
the  world  has  ever  known.  The  multitude 
has  the  capacity  to  recognize  a  man  when 
it  sees  him.  A  distracted  world  is  clamor- 
ing for  leaders  who  can  say  the  word  of  wis- 
dom because  they  have  intelligence  trained 


184      THE  UNITED  STATES 

for  their  tasks.  We  confront  far-reaching 
problems  of  capital  and  labor.  Who  but 
an  educated  man  can  understand  them? 
Cobbett  defined  capital  as  "money  taken  from 
the  laboring  classes,  which,  being  given  to 
army  tailors  and  such  hke,  enables  them  to 
keep  fox  hounds  and  trace  their  descent  from 
the  Normans."  There  is  cynical  cleverness 
in  the  definition,  but  it  does  not  go  far  to 
explain  one  of  the  most  intricate  problems 
of  our  present  society.  One  condition  of  a 
real  belief  in  liberty  is  a  prior  belief  in  man, 
in  his  capacity  and  willingness  to  see  and  fol- 
low the  good,  else  would  hberty  be  only  the 
license  to  the  brute  to  gratify  his  own  appe- 
tites. When  we  claim  the  right  for  the  indi- 
vidual to  judge  for  himself  we  imply  the 
confidence  that  in  the  long  run  he  will  judge 
wisely  and  who  can  help  him  to  do  so  if  it 
is  not  the  trained  and  the  educated? 

There  is  ground  for  a  chastened  optimism 
when  we  look  out  on  the  world.  The  free 
EngHsh-speaking  peoples  have  power.  Let 
that  be  written  in  the  forefront  of  our  hopes. 
For  more  than  a  hundred  years  there  has 
been  no  bloody  strife  between  the  two  divi- 


AND  CANADA  185 

sions.  The  long  record  of  peace  among  some 
of  the  great  nations  takes  a  very  wide  sweep 
which  seems  to  indicate  the  working  of 
forces  hidden  to  our  consciousness.  In  the 
hands  of  five  nations  is  to-day  the  destiny 
of  the  world.  The  nations  are  the  United 
States,  Britain,  France,  Italy,  and  Japan; 
and  it  is  noteworthy  that  no  one  of  them 
has  for  more  than  a  century  drawn  the  sword 
against  any  of  the  others.  They  represent 
the  dominant  power  in  all  the  continents. 
Hardly  a  dog  dare  bark  should  they  say  the 
word  of  prohibition — and  among  themselves 
they  have  loved  and  long  preserved  peace. 
This  is  a  story  full  of  promise.  Of  prom- 
ise, too,  though  often  not  so  regarded,  is  a 
part  of  the  record  of  the  nations  which  have 
been  at  war.  We  look  upon  the  settlements 
made  at  Vienna  in  1815  as  having  contained 
the  seed  of  future  strife.  Yet  they  so  en- 
dured that  for  forty  years  there  was  no  seri- 
ous war  in  Europe.  Nothing  is  clearer  in 
the  history  of  Europe  during  the  last  hun- 
dred years  than  that  the  hand  of  justice  is 
strong  to  rem,ove  the  causes  of  war.  Dur- 
ing that  period  the  Turk  has  been  at  the 


186       THE  UNITED  STATES 

root  of  half  the  wars  of  Europe.  His  is  a 
terrible  record.  His  brutal  tyranny  mangled 
the  very  souls  of  the  peoples  of  southeastern 
Europe,  and  recovery  from  their  degrada- 
tion will  take  centuries.  The  Turk  caused 
the  Crimean  war.  He  has  been  the  source 
of  most  of  the  trouble  in  the  Balkans.  He 
brought  Russia  and  Great  Britain  face  to 
face  with  war  in  1878.  More  than  once  did 
his  presence  in  Europe  bring  Russia  and 
Austria  to  the  verge  of  war.  In  his  fatuous 
folly,  after  Italy  and  the  Balkan  states  had 
nearly  destroyed  him,  he  plunged  into  the 
last  great  war.  He  has  long  been  the  key 
to  European  unrest.  He  ruled  without  jus- 
tice. Now,  with  his  malevolent  power  gone, 
the  ferment  of  Europe  will  tend  to  disap- 
pear. Other  modern  wars  have  been  due  to 
a  type  of  injustice  which  broad  statesman- 
ship could  correct.  It  was  injustice  in  Italy 
that  brought  Austria  and  France  to  war  in 
1859.  It  was  slavery  that  brought  civil  war 
in  the  United  States.  It  was  the  denial  of 
nationahsm,  in  itself  a  sound  principle  of 
poHtical  life,  which  brought  the  era  of  war 
in  central  Europe  between  1864  and  1871. 


AND  CANADA  187 

With  the  alien  oppressor  removed  and  the 
rights  of  nationality  now  recognized,  most 
of  the  causes  of  recent  wars  disappear.  It 
will  take  time  for  peoples  suddenly  freed  to 
find  their  natural  equilibrium,  but  war  will 
tend  steadily  to  decrease  if  nations  will  rec- 
ognize decent  standards  of  justice,  and  the 
free  nations  must  assert  these  standards. 

It  is  a  sound  maxim  of  individual  conduct 
to  keep  friendships  in  repair,  and  the  maxim 
is  sound,  too,  for  nations.  There  is  no  ground 
for  suspicion  and  antagonism  between  the 
EngHsh-speaking  peoples.  They  are  rivals 
in  trade,  but  so  also  are  persons  who  share  a 
common  citizenship  and  patriotism.  If  they 
will  cultivate  friendship  and  rebuke  the 
breeders  of  strife,  they  can  lead  the  world 
with  power  irresistible.  To  be  champions 
of  justice  in  the  world,  they  must  correct  the 
injustices  within  their  own  borders.  Every 
nation  has  some  great  vexing  problem  to  test 
the  vitality  of  its  spirit  of  justice.  Great 
Britain  has  the  problem  of  Ireland,  the 
United  States  that  of  the  negro.  Both  are 
profoundly  difficult  and  neither  is  capable 
of  any  ready-made  or  mechanical  solution. 


188       THE  UNITED  STATES 

The  thing  to  make  sure  of  is  that  remedial 
processes  are  working  vigorously.  There  is 
no  harm  in  one  nation  criticizing  another  and 
pointing  out  defects.  What  does  harm  is 
malignancy,  the  devilish  desire  to  create  dis- 
cord. School-books  foster  it  when  they  in- 
still into  the  minds  of  the  children  of  to-day 
the  worn-out  passions  of  conflicts  long  since 
ended.  The  press  fosters  it  when  it  places 
undue  emphasis  upon  differences  and  for- 
gets deeper  causes  for  agreement.  Indi- 
viduals foster  it  when  they  permit  them- 
selves to  speak  of  other  nations  in  terms  of 
reproach  and  contempt.  To  keep  friend- 
ships in  repair  we  must  nourish  the  methods 
of  friendship. 

We  stand  to-day  at  the  beginning  of  a 
new  era  for  mankind.  As  never  before  in 
hirnian  history  are  minds  unsettled  and  old 
methods  of  action  and  persuasion  aban- 
doned. We  confront  in  millions  suspicion 
and  discontent,  so  strident  that  timid  souls 
think  all  is  lost  and  abandon  hope  for  hu- 
man society.  But,  unless  we  give  up  belief 
in  mankind,  this  is  not  the  note  of  true  man- 
hood.   Rather  is  the  call  of  to-day  to  new 


AND  CANADA  189 

faith  and,  on  the  basis  of  faith,  hope.  The 
law  of  sacrifice  is  the  law  of  human  progress. 
There  is  a  sacrifice  or,  rather,  a  retribution, 
which  is  the  Nemesis  of  national  misconduct, 
and  Nemesis  has  now  demanded  her  full  por- 
tion. The  nations  were  selfish  and  greedy; 
the  rich  were  arrogant  and  the  poor  were 
oppressed;  there  were  dreadful  sores  in  the 
body  pohtic;  and  the  screaming  horror  of 
war  was,  in  part  at  least,  nature's  heahng. 
But  there  were  other  sacrifices  than  those 
which  purifying  justice  demanded.  Mil- 
lions of  brave  men,  the  pride  of  the  nations 
from  which  they  sprang,  confronted  death 
with  firm  and  sad  constancy,  not  because  they 
believed  that  they  must  die  to  expiate  their 
country's  sin,  but  because  they  were  willing 
to  die  as  Christ  died,  to  save  mankind  by  a 
glorious  obedience  to  the  highest  call  of  man- 
hood. The  world  stands  in  the  light  of  that 
stupendous  sacrifice,  and  faith  in  what  is  in- 
volved in  manhood  makes  us  believe  that  the 
sacrifices  cannot  have  been  in  vain. 

Here  on  the  American  continent  two 
English-speaking  federations,  heirs  to  the 
liberty  of  all  the  ages,  are  Hving  side  by  side 


190      THE  UNITED  STATES 

in  the  vast  expanse  of  their  territories,  and 
are  called  to  take  their  share  of  responsibil- 
ity for  human  well-being.  The  older  fed- 
eration has  no  antagonism  to  the  younger. 
The  younger  has  copied  the  older  in  much 
that  it  has  done.  The  older,  a  new  type  of 
political  society  in  a  new  sphere,  with  its 
own  tests  and  standards,  shows  a  proud  in- 
dependence of  what  the  rest  of  the  world 
may  think.  The  younger  is  a  member  of  a 
world-wide  union;  it  is  tied  by  convictions 
and  sympathy  to  an  ancient  state;  and  it  is 
following  the  traditions  of  that  state.  It 
would  be  the  pride  of  Canada  to  play  some 
worthy  part  in  bringing  closer  together  this 
ancient  state  and  the  newer  society  in  Amer- 
ica. She  owes  m,uch  to  both ;  in  a  deep  sense 
she  is  a  pupil  of  both;  she  has  shared  the 
burdens  of  both  in  the  hard  iield  of  war ;  and 
she  is  hnked  to  both  by  fresh  memories  of 
its  stern  cost. 

Thus  my  last  word,  a  Briton,  a  Canadian, 
an  alien  speaking  in  the  United  States,  is 
this,  that  there  is  something  noble  to  be  done 
to  save  the  world,  that  our  two  peoples  rep- 
resent dominant  power  in  the  world,  and 


AND  CANADA  191 

that  they  can,  if  they  will,  achieve  a  mighty 
thing  for  mankind.  The  sick  world  needs 
the  support  of  the  strongest  arms.  Much 
ought  to  be  done,  and  what  ought  to  be  done 
can  be  done.  "What  desertion  is  for  the  sol- 
dier, pessimism  is  for  the  civilian,"  said  a 
French  writer  during  the  war.  The  war  is 
over,  and  the  problems  of  peace  are  before 
us.  During  war  faith  made  us  spurn  any 
thought  that  we  could  be  beaten.  It  is  trea- 
son to  mankind  to  give  up  hope  that  similar 
endurance  and  courage  can  solve  our  prob- 
lems of  peace. 


y 


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